


Dreamers With Empty Hands

by girlbookwrm



Series: The Hundred Year Playlist [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: (they're bi), All-American Angst, Bisexual Steve Rogers, Chronically Ill Steve Rogers, F/M, Jewish Bucky Barnes, M/M, Mutual Pining, Period Typical Attitudes, Pre-Captain America: The First Avenger, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Protective Bucky Barnes, Sharing a Bed, Swearing, Two Bros Sitting In An Apartment Five Feet Apart Cuz They're Not Gay, Virgin Steve Rogers, heavily sarcastic quote unquote "PLATONIC", not that steve knows that, some historical accuracy, some historical inaccuracy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-01
Updated: 2018-01-22
Packaged: 2019-02-08 07:28:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 41,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12859722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlbookwrm/pseuds/girlbookwrm
Summary: Steve knows pain. Has always known pain. Far back as he can remember, hurting has been a part of him.AKA Steve’s Rhapsody in Pain, Part One: Chronic Illness Edition. Contents: one (1) Smol Steve Rogers with Very Big Pain Problems, one (1) Wee Bucky Barnes with a Very Foul Mouth, twenty thousand (20,000) Nazis in Madison Square Gardens, infinite pining, and excessive use of parentheses.





	1. Just Try It and I'll Start a Riot

**Author's Note:**

> It's autumn in New York that brings the promise of new love.  
> Autumn in New York is often mingled with pain.  
>  **Dreamers with empty hands** may sigh for exotic lands;  
>  It's autumn in New York;  
> It's good to live it again.  
> \- [Autumn in New York](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NO2Ij1eO-GQ) by Vernon Duke, 1934
> 
>  
> 
> [(Listen to the full series playlist on Spotify)](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4cO5vrDvCKErHEPtudEmEy)

## Prelude

- [Rhapsody in Blue](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynEOo28lsbc) by George Gershwin, 1924

 

Steve knows pain. Has always known pain. Far back as he can remember, hurting has been a part of him.

When he's a kid, his ma keeps a jar of nails sitting up on the windowsill next to the hammer. Every time the wind starts to pick up, they tack a piece of canvas up over the rattling glass to stop the drafts. But they both love the sunlight so much that they keep taking it down as soon as they can stand the chill. It's worth it -- having wind in your hair when you're inside -- so long as you get the sun on your face too.

(Later, when he and Bucky move into that dumpy little apartment near the queer bar, they keep a hammer and a jar of nails on the windowsill for just the same reason. Bucky’s always putting old blankets over the glass to keep the chill out of Steve’s lungs, and Steve is forever pulling the nails out so he can get some decent light to draw by. But half the time he just ends up staring at that dumb pickle jar with a dozen nails rattling around in it: some of them all bent, some of them rusted, some of them sharp as hell upholstery tacks that keep falling out of Bucky's three-legged armchair.)

(Much later, he thinks of that jar of nails and remembers: the stabbing in his chest, the tight ache in his lungs, the burn in his throat from coughing himself ragged, the sharp agony roiling in his stomach, the spikes of pain poking through his crooked spine. Those frailties are long gone, but pain still hangs around: loss, and disappointment, and hurt. He still imagines that fragile glass container full of sharp bits of metal and thinks: _yeah, me too, pal.)_

 

 

 

## 1

 _Old Man Sunshine, listen, you_  
_Never tell me dreams come true_  
**_Just try it, and I'll start a riot_ **

_-[But Not For Me](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHMrZaiPuzA) by George and  Ira Gershwin, 1930._

 

Steve’s earliest clear memory is of his mother lying to his face.

“You're gonna be alright,” she says, with a soft, watery smile. Her hair is a shade or two lighter than his, and he recalls the sunlight catching on it. Spun gold. He’s lying in bed, and everything hurts: it’s too hot and too cold and his skin aches and itches and his throat’s so sore he can’t swallow. “You'll be better soon,” she assures him. “I promise you will. You're gonna be alright.”

It’s 1924, and he’s six years old, but he's not stupid. He knows he has scarlet fever, and he knows what that means. He’s never been so scared in his life, because the little girl next door had scarlet fever and she _died_ from it. One day she was there, and the next day she was just gone. Snuffed out like a candle. So he knows his mom is lying when she says he's gonna be alright.

The fever gets worse. Steve doesn’t remember all of it, but he remembers enough. It gets so bad that he starts seeing things. The days jumble together into a confused haze. He can’t tell the real world from his hallucinations, can’t tell whether it’s day or night, can’t tell a cool cloth from the biting icy touch of death coming for him. There's a giant spider  hunched over his bed, ready to spin him up in a cocoon and dissolve him into soup. There's a priest giving him last rites. (He never is sure whether that really happened or not, but he remembers it very clearly. He remembers the sense of peace that washed over him, with an equal wave of despair.) He remembers his mother bending over him with her rosary, her face dripping with tears.

But then, he also remembers her grabbing at her hair and pulling her face off like it was a mask, revealing slick red muscle and grinning teeth beneath.

He squeezes his eyes tight shut, shaking. Then he can only hear her voice (barely audible over the other whispers he doesn’t recognize or understand) and she sounds just the same. She puts the cool cloth on his forehead and speaks softly in his ear. “You’re going to be alright. I promise. I promise it won’t hurt forever.”

He doesn’t know why grownups lie right to his face like that, like he can’t figure out that it’s a lie. Hallucinating and half out of his mind he knows that’s a lie. But he wants to think it’s true.

He’s only six, after all.

 

In the end, the scarlet fever _doesn’t_ kill him, which is a real surprise to everyone. His mom hugs him so hard it makes his bones ache.

And then, about a month later, his bones start aching for real, and it starts all over again.

Great.

The rheumatic fever is just as bad as the scarlet fever, maybe worse because it feels like it’s eating him from the inside out. He cries a little, in the nights, when he thinks his mom can’t hear him. She told him that the pain would stop, and she'd been right about that. But she’d never said that it would come back, that it would _always_ be there, waiting for him.

He doesn’t want to die. He hasn’t even _done_ anything yet. He hasn’t even had a _life_ and it’s gonna _end._

 

But it doesn’t.

“You got no quit in you,” his mom says, shaky and wondering, the day he can sit up and hold his own soup bowl. “No quit at all.” She pushes his hair back from his forehead and smiles at him, smiles like sunshine. “Just like your dad,” she adds, softly.

He doesn’t point out that his dad is dead. Which is about as _quit_ as it gets, if you ask him. But he would never say that. Not to his mom. Life hurts enough. There's no call to go making it worse. If he's got a body full of hurting, that's bad for him, but he doesn't have to go spreading it around, does he? He smiles for her instead.

And anyway. She’s right, this time. Truer words have never been spoken. He doesn’t have any quit in him. Not a single drop of it. Sometimes he wishes he did.

 

(Later, it occurs to him that if he _had_ quit back in 1924, he woulda never met Buck.)

 

* * *

 

It’s October 1926, and the heating is busted. He’s eight years old, and all energy, a firecracker in the midst of going off all the time. This time two years ago, he was still down with the rheumatic fever, but he didn’t let it keep him down. He’s awful proud of that. He’s starting to get his strength back, he’s sure of it.

He’s been playing stickball. He’s good at stickball, actually. He's got an instinct for it, the angles of it, the feel of the ball connecting in just the right way. He sent it soaring over everyone’s head and down the side alley where it bounced off the wall and ended up in a dumpster. He’d torn around the “bases” (a fire hydrant, a manhole cover, and a trash can, respectively) so fast that even the opposing team had been impressed. They still jeered and shouted, but they'd been impressed. It was the last run, and his team didn't win, but they came close, thanks to him, and that feels good anyway. Going out on a high note, fighting hard in a battle he didn't win, but still fought.

The air burns in his lungs as he heads inside and hangs up his jacket. It’s almost colder in than out, but he’s still flush with victory, dreaming of playing for the Dodgers one day. He starts running up the stairs.

His mom is always telling him not to run too much, putting a hand on his chest and reminding him that his heart is special, ever since the fever, and he has to take special care of it. But he knows it’s not special; it’s just big and dumb. Just like his feet, his heart can’t hold a steady rhythm to save his life. Sometimes he gets sudden sharp aches that stab through his chest without warning and fade just as quickly. It happens more when he’s running.

But he’s in a hurry. He wants to tell his mom about his home run, wants her to know --

He’s halfway up the stairs when he realizes there’s something wrong. Not with his heart. With his lungs. His footsteps stutter and he has to stop. He coughs. Feels like he’s got something in his chest, in his throat. A cold coming on, maybe, but faster.  _Too_ fast. He can’t take a deep breath, like that time one of the bigger boys sat on him, crushing him. It's like he's breathing through a straw, like he's drowning, right here in the cold, dry air of the stairwell.

He sits on the landing, gasping, wheezing -- he can hear the high whistle of breath in his chest. His dumb heart is rabbiting again, with panic, with fear. He can’t get a breath in, can’t get any air. His vision is spotting, his eyes watering, his --

His mom is there. She must’ve heard him coughing and come to see if he was alright, but it feels like she just appeared at his side. Like she always does. She’s always there to help when something goes wrong with his dumb broken body. She puts a hand on his back and rubs. “Stevie? Stevie lad, what’s wrong?”

He can’t say it, can’t speak. It hurts. It _hurts._

 

By the time his next birthday rolls around, they tell him he has asthma. They tell his ma about treatments she can't afford, and gently suggest that he could talk to someone, that maybe it's because of his dad being dead. Which seems weird until Steve works out that it's because they think he's not _really_ sick. They think he might be crazy, making it up in his head.

He's not, but it hurts that they think that. A different kind of hurt from the asthma or his bad ticker, but still.

“Doesn't matter what they think,” his mom tells him.

She takes him out to see the fireworks. As he watches, he wonders what it's like to be a firework. He wonders if it hurts to explode like that. He's pretty sure that it hurts more to be a dud.

 

The asthma doesn’t kill him right away, doesn’t sweep over him the way the fevers did. But it does change things. Changes everything. He can’t keep up with the other kids anymore, has to stay inside when it’s too cold for his lungs. He plays with toy soldiers instead, leading them in maneuvers, outsmarting enemies that only exist in his imagination.

He starts drawing maps, maps of the countries his soldiers are liberating, the castles they’re defending. But that turns into other kinds of drawings: drawings for his mom, for the walls, for himself. Drawings of little things he doesn’t want to forget. He likes it, likes getting them down on paper and doing it right. And it’s something to do with his hands on the days he can’t go to school and can’t get out of bed.

He draws kids playing stickball, tries to catch them in motion and can’t quite recapture the feeling of that last home run. But it’s close. It’s close.

Kids avoid him now, because he’s sick and he can’t play. Grownups are nicer to him now, but in a careful way, like they think he doesn’t know what that means. But Steve’s no fool. He knows what death is. He knows he’s not going to get to be old. If he’s very lucky, he’ll get to see his twelfth birthday. He overheard the doctor saying so, so it must be true. Nothing he can do about it. No sense crying about it.

But he’d like to do some good before he goes. Even if it’s just little things, like helping Gramma Hubbard get her groceries up the stairs. When birds crash into the window and land, stunned, on the fire escape, he nurses them back to health with his mom's help. He brings home sidewalk flowers for her whenever he can, because it makes her smile. It’s not enough, it’s never enough, but it’s something. He wants to do more -- he knows in his bones he can do so much _more._ But he has to believe that little things like that _matter,_ because they’re all his broken down, twisted up body can manage.

 

(Later, he thinks maybe getting Buck’s friendship was some kind of divine reward for his persistence, and his good intentions.)

 

(Much later, he thinks maybe that reward got taken away as a punishment for hubris.)

 

* * *

  

It’s 1928, he’s ten, and he’s not at all the same kid he was when he was eight, or six. Hell, if his five-year-old self walked up to him now, he doubts the kid would know his own face. Steve’s got growing pains on top of all the other pains, and he’s starving all the time, even though most everything makes him sick. He’s shooting up, and his mom says he was born to be tall, just like his dad, who was over six foot.

Steve already feels stretched too thin. He feels sicker every day, like his body is trying to outgrow what his heart can sustain, in a desperate bid to be everything he wants to be.

Steve is aware that most kids his age don’t think about themselves like this.

He’s not most kids his age.

His blood doesn't work like it should -- pernicious anemia -- and he's gotta eat loads and loads of liver till the pharmacy gets these pills for him to take so his dumb body doesn’t completely shut down. His stomach pains turn out to be ulcers and it's hard to put on weight when your guts feel like they're filled with hot knives, so he's a real beanpole. And the taller he gets, the more it becomes obvious that his back ain't right. Scoliosis. He's a little deaf in one ear too. And just to kick a guy when he's down: colorblind.

Perfect.

 

He sees the first poster in September, a balmy day warm enough to risk a long walk through the city.

SOME PEOPLE ARE BORN TO BE A BURDEN TO THE REST, it tells him.

He contemplates the poster and the pamphlets posted with it. When he gets into the fine print, telling him how people oughta be treated like guinea pigs or cattle, to better the race or whatever, he scoffs in disgust, tears it all down, and throws it in the nearest trash can. He doesn’t care whether he should or not, whether it’s allowed. He knows right from wrong, and these eugenics weirdos? They’re wrong. You don’t get to tell someone whether or not they get to have a family.

But here's the thing: some people _are_ a burden to the rest. Steve knows it, because he's one of them. He's a burden on his mom, on the neighbors who have to listen to him coughing up a lung, the doctors who can't help him but have to keep trying anyway. He's a burden, always has been. He knows it, and the knowing lodges under his skin, another nail in the jar.

That doesn’t mean he shouldn’t have been born at all, because his mom loved his dad and they wanted a family. It’s not their fault he turned out all twisted up and broken inside. It’s not his fault either, but that doesn’t make him less of a burden. Life ain't fair. No one ever promised it would be.

And maybe that’s when he decides he’s never gonna marry. What if they had a kid? What if the kid was like him? Who is he to saddle some poor dame with a wheezy, crooked, crippled husband, and a baby too sick to grow up? They’d both die and break her damn heart, like he’s gonna break his mom's heart one of these days.

He probably won’t live long enough to get married, anyway. And he’s terrible with kids. So it’s fine. He doesn’t have to be a burden to anyone else. If he lives long enough, he’ll just find a way to make it on his own.

 

(Much, much later, he realizes that he wasn’t a _burden_ , and Buck wasn’t a goddamn _reward._ People ain’t _things,_ to be given and taken away.)

 

* * *

 

It’s 1929 -- a bad year all around, but people still need nursing, so his mom at least ain’t out of work like some are. Even so, feels like the world’s coming down around their ears. People jumping outta buildings, getting kicked outta their homes, standing in line at the soup kitchens… It’s all too big for him to fully wrap his head around.

Steve’s eleven; his biggest problem is that he _really_ doesn’t want to go to school.

“I don't care that it hurts Steven Grant, you're a Rogers and that means you get up and keep going anyway,” his mom tells him. “You _always_ stand up.”

He’s not stupid, he’s _not,_  but he misses classes a lot, from being sick so much. And he's got no friends; no one will share their notes with him, or bring him his homework. So he’s the skinniest, and he’s got the worst marks. The only thing he's got going for him is his handwriting. He’s got nice handwriting, and he’s not left-handed. There’s a kid a year ahead of them who’s always getting in trouble for writing with his left hand. But handwriting is a small victory. Steve is bottom of the class in reading and writing and especially in math. So yeah. Sometimes he wants to skip school, so he doesn’t have to listen to people telling him that he’s stupid as well as sickly.

He feels ashamed, after. His dad's purple heart sits on the mantle, and he knows the story: that Dad went back, to help get others out, over and over. He kept going even when it hurt. Sometimes it makes Steve real angry, because that little medal means that he doesn’t have a dad anymore. But he knows that because he _doesn’t_ have a dad, there’s a whole lotta other people who _do._  And that’s a _good_ kind of hurt, actually.

So he gets up and keep going. That what a Rogers does. When his body hurts and he doesn’t want to go to school, he gets up anyway. When his ma is sick and it scares him so bad he wants to curl up under his bed and never come out, he gets up anyway. When the bullies warn him to stay down, he gets up anyway.

It’s a kind of mantra. He knows that there’s always gonna be pain. But he’s got no quit, so he always stands up.

 

(Later, he realizes that, for all the chances that seemed to be involved, meeting Bucky was an inevitability. Steve is who he is: a trouble-making little shit with an overdeveloped sense of idealism, who won't stay down. And Bucky is who he is; a protector, always rooting for the underdog, always looking out for the little guy. Steve was the littlest guy in Brooklyn: they were always going to collide eventually. They were always going to end up being friends. It wasn't fate, it was physics. It was gravity.)

 

* * *

 

It’s 1930. He's twelve, and still alive despite the odds. Despite what the doctors said. Today, the bullies are after his money, too bad for them.

He runs from them for a long while, but in the end, his lungs can’t take it anymore. His heart is beating drunkenly at his ribs, begging him to stop. He turns down another alley, staggers to the dead end, and bends over, arms braced on his knees, trying to catch his breath, without much luck. He spits blood on the paving stones under his feet and swipes the back of his hand over his mouth. They got in a punch early on, after he refused to pay the so-called ‘toll’ but before he ran for it.

“Rogers! Hey Rogers!”

 _Aw man, these guys just won’t give up._ Steve looks back and sees them coming: three kids, older than him, and bigger if not taller. He’s skinny, but he sticks out like a sunflower among dandelions in his class.

“You think you can get away from us?” one of them says -- Billy Thompson, the scariest kid in Brooklyn. The biggest and meanest of the bullies. His pa is a mob enforcer, they say. He's probably gonna go the same way, they say. And that’s Jack on his left and Eddie on his right. “You can’t get away from us,” Billy sneers. “Just give it up.”

Steve takes a step back, but he doesn’t even bother looking for a way out. His breath is coming quick and shallow. He’s so sick of running. They never stop coming after him. And if you ain’t running, there’s only one alternative. He puts his fists up.

Jack laughs, showing his missing tooth.

“You serious?” says Eddie, his voice nasally, even by Brooklyn standards. “It’ll be like fighting a girl!”

“Oh yeah?” Steve says, and swings for him. It doesn’t even connect, and it throws him off balance. Jack steps in and shoves him back hard. He falls on his backside, and can barely register the scrapes on his palms before they’re kicking him in the ribs and legs, kicking him even though he’s down.

All Steve can do is curl up, bring his arms up to cover to his face, tuck his body in around his stomach and try to breathe through it. He grits his teeth hard, breathing harsh as the blows rain down: a foot in his ribs drives a cry out of him, and someone stomps on his head. If he didn’t have both arms curved around his skull, that might have been the end of it, but as it is, he’s just got bruises and scrapes on his forearms.

After an eternity, they step back. “Had enough?” says Billy’s voice. There's a dark edge in it now, going dangerous.

Steve scrambles back, fast as he can, and gets to his feet, swaying hard, catching his balance against a rough wall. It smells like wet brick and rotting trash back here, and all he can taste is blood in his mouth. His lip is split, and he bit the inside of his cheek. He glares, says nothing.

“C’mon runt, you’re the one who crossed into our turf," Billy says, smug.

“It’s a free country, ain’t it?” Steve challenges.

“Ain’t nothing free for eighth avenue punks like you,” Jack pipes up.

“I ain’t givin' you a cent!” Steve shouts. He doesn’t actually _have_ a cent, but he ain’t gonna tell them that.

“We got all day to get it outta ya,” Billy says, with an awful inevitability behind his words and a smile on his face. Steve’s breath is coming shallow and fast. Wheezing. His heart is tripping over itself, stabbing pains in his chest. He can do this till he drops, but that might come sooner rather than later.

Billy's expression goes mean in a flash, and then there’s his fist coming out of nowhere, connecting hard and setting his head ringing. Steve staggers back, one hand coming up to his face, the other held out to ward off another blow.

“How dumb are you, huh? Go down and stay down, why doncha?” says Eddie, behind Billy. He sounds nervous.

“Billy come on--” Jack starts.

“Shut the hell up,” Billy says, looming closer, looking murderous. “C’mon punk. Give up the cash or I’m putting you in the East River.”

Steve straightens up, mouth open, blood dripping from the corner. “You think you scare me?” he says, jutting his chin. He’s looked death in the face twice, he’s listened to his own heart trying to stop in his chest. He’s seen his nightmares crawling out into the daylight. These jerks ain’t shit. Not that he’d ever say it like that, his momma taught him better than to swear like--

“Hey! Assholes!” bellows a voice from the end of the alley. The three bullies all turn. There’s a kid there -- short but stocky, with wild dark hair and a scowl like all the thunderclouds in the world. “Leave him alone!”

“What’s it to you, Barnes?” says Billy. But there's something in his voice that makes Steve think the bullies have run into this guy before. And maybe they’re a little scared of him.

Steve thinks he’s seen this kid before, like they go to school together, but not in the same class. And Steve knows all the bullies by sight; this kid ain’t one of ‘em, so he can’t think why Billy would be scared.

Then the kid -- Barnes, apparently -- opens his mouth and lets out a stream of cursing so foul that Steve feels his ears turn pink. He's never heard words like that coming out of anyone, much less a kid almost his age. Barnes raises his fists like a real boxer and then charges, barreling down the alley, head forward, intent.

Barnes is like a little tornado, throwing punches hard and hollering up a storm. He grabs Eddie by the front of his shirt and throws him bodily, heaving him towards the end of the alley. Steve has to scramble back, right into the trash cans. Then Barnes turns on Jack. Eddie hits the ground hard at Steve's feet. He snatches up a half brick and hefts it back over one shoulder, ready to throw it right at the dark tousled head of Steve’s rescuer. He doesn't even notice Steve behind him.

Steve snatches up a trashcan lid and smashes it over Eddie’s head, using his height to his advantage. Eddie drops the brick and stumbles away. Jack is already making a break for it. Billy and Barnes are circling each other. Billy throws a punch, but Barnes ducks, quick as lightning. Then, Barnes snaps a surprise blow to Billy’s gut with his left hand and then Billy’s going too. They’re all three of ‘em running.

“Yeah, that’s right!” Barnes shouts after them. “Go chase yourselves! Fuckers!”

Then the Barnes kid turns to Steve and Steve almost takes a step back, half expecting that terrifying glare and foul mouth to turn on him next, but the kid just grins. It's all teeth and sparkling blue eyes and he laughs like he didn't just beat the shit outta three kids bigger than him. “Bullies. Always running true to form. And I do mean _running!”_ He laughs again at his own dumb joke. What a dope. He's a couple inches shorter than Steve but he's got broad shoulders, big hands, feet planted wide like he's making himself into a wall.

“I'd have worn them down eventually,” Steve says. He's wary. He didn't ask for a rescue; he doesn't know what Barnes is gonna do next. He tries to look tough. He ruins it by coughing weakly into one hand.

Barnes laughs again, loud and brash. “Yeah, when they died of old age maybe.” He talks so loud that Steve doesn’t even have to tilt his head to put his good ear towards him.

Steve should take the joke, should say something self deprecating and easygoing, this kid just saved his sorry ass, after all. But he’s bruised and tired and his chest aches from the run. Everything hurts just that little bit more than usual, so instead he glares. He just doesn't know what to make of this kid. No one ever comes to Steve's rescue. No one. He's not sure he likes it, either.

Barnes tips his head back, chin out, eyes assessing. “I never seen someone keep getting up like that.” There's almost admiration in the way he says it, like maybe Steve’s tenacity was an inspiration or somethin’. But Barnes has to ruin it by adding: “I think you _like_ getting punched.”

“You’re one to talk. Wasn’t your fight,” Steve says stubbornly.

“Yeah maybe not. But I’ve dealt with that kinda stuff before." He cocks his head to one side, pulls a wry face. "You gotta turn and fight. You start running, they'll never let you stop. I know from experience.”

“You?” It’s hard to imagine anyone picking on this blue-eyed boy with the mean punch and the big smile. His clothes are clean and well-fitted, he’s not too short or too tall, not too much of anything. Nothing about him stands out, 'cept maybe that movie star smile. “Bullies come after _you?_  Why?” Steve asks, pushing his ill-fitting suspenders back up onto his skinny shoulders. He knows it’s rude to ask, but he’s curious, and he’s too tired to hold himself back.

Barnes shrugs one shoulder. “I got baby sisters need lookin' out for." He pauses, then sighs and adds: "My ma doesn’t go to church. People talk. Had to teach ‘em not to. All you gotta do is win a coupla fights, eventually people stop picking 'em.”

“You make it sound so easy,” Steve says bitterly.

Barnes grins. “Yeah well. I got an unfair advantage.” He wiggles the fingers on his left hand. “No one sees a left hook comin'.”

And that's when Steve places him, finally. He knows this kid. This is the kid in the grade ahead of him, the one who won’t stop writing left-handed. He heard that the nuns tried everything they could think of, but he out-stubborned them in the end and they gave up.

“That’s a dirty trick,” Steve says, a bit belligerently. It probably isn't, really, but Steve doesn't quite trust this kid yet.

“So’s kicking a man when he’s down, or using half-bricks. Or using trash can lids.” Barnes gives him a significant look and Steve can feel his face starting to go red again. “Thanks for that, by the way. What’s your name?”

“Steve Rogers,” Steve says, a bit reluctantly, holding out a hand. The kid helped him, he’s earned Steve’s name and a handshake, at least.

“James Buchanan Barnes,” the kid says, shaking firmly, grinning up at Steve. “My friends call me Bucky.”

“So what do I call ya?” Steve snarks.

“Whatever the hell ya like, pal. I ain't gonna fight ya, even if that is what you're looking for.”

“Jerk!” Steve shoves him on the shoulder. If he's honest, he doesn’t really want to fight this kid, but he doesn’t want to be coddled either.

Bucky shoves right back, without hesitation, but he’s grinning. It’s a friendly kind of push. Doesn’t even hurt much, but still. It lets Steve know that he isn’t being pitied. “Punk!”

Against his will, Steve finds himself starting to smile. It hurts -- he's got a split lip, after all -- but it’s worth it.

(Later, Steve knows that's where it all starts.)

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is chapter 1 (of 7) of part 1 (of at least 6, plus the extras in The B-Sides). (Part 6 will start posting in March 2019)   
> They can be read in any order you like, but this is, indeed, _the beginning of everything._
> 
> "research" is probably a strong word to use for what I do, but if you're interested in the main inspirations for this chapter, check out the following:
> 
> Sickly Steve: [Chronically Ill Steve Rogers](https://historicallyaccuratesteve.tumblr.com/post/90483251181/chronically-ill-steve-rogers) and [Scriptmedic's What Is Asthma post](http://www.scriptmedicblog.com/asthma-for-writers-part-1-what-is-asthma-2/) (I also consulted my extremely asthmatic roommate, who may or may not be a real life pre-serum steve)
> 
> A General Guide for How To Write Pre-Serum Steve: [All You Need To Know, IMO](https://glynnisi.tumblr.com/post/164998203215/bluandorange-hey-so-you-wanna-write-mcu)
> 
> Also: [Foul-Mouthed Bucky Barnes](http://rebloggy.com/post/captain-america-set-cap-swearing-buck-bucky-winter-soldier-original-sin-cable/85544271450) is the light of my life and true to comics canon, and Gramma Hubbard is also from the comics (kinda, though in the comics she's Bucky's grandma, not just an old lady who lives in Steve's building)
> 
> Additionally, some aspects of the first meeting (including some of the Extremely Questionable New York Geography) are taken from the First Vengeance comic.
> 
> And Finally: Steve’s dream about his mom pulling her face off, and the dream about the spider, are Convenient Foreshadowing Moments but also a Real Dream that I had as a child on a Regular Fucking Basis because my brain is a real fun place to live.


	2. If We're Alone Together

## 2

 _And we can weather the great unknown_  
_**If we’re alone together**_

_-[Alone Together](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RINKtVU0fo) by Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz, 1932_

 

(Later, on the Western Front, he and Bucky are on watch together, and Bucky just reaches over and takes Steve's cigarette ration right out of his jacket pocket. Steve barks out a laugh, even though he  _shouldn't_ , because there could be krauts in the woods _._ Bucky glares over at him, a smoke already dangling from the corner of his mouth. "The fuck, Steve?" he says, so quiet even Steve can barely hear it.

"In each other's pockets," Steve says.  _"In each others' pockets,_ Buck."

Bucky rolls his eyes and flicks open his lighter. "You moron."

The thing is, Mrs. Rogers had always said that about them.  _You two. Always in each others' pockets._ At the time, it seemed like an odd phrase. It didn’t make any sense, visually. He tried to picture them both climbing into each other’s pockets and it just... All Steve could think of was Walt the Hobo, who was called Walt because he had a pet mouse (Mickey, obviously) who lived in his breast pocket and ate cracker crumbs. So Steve had always hated the phrase  _in each others' pockets_  because he knew that people thought of him as the mouse that lived in Bucky's pocket. And he  _hated that._ He hated being little, and scrawny, but more than that he hated being  _dependent --_ almost as much as he hated being _seen_ as dependent. 

But it's not like people were wrong about them. It sometimes felt like they’d always been this way: two parts of one unit. But the truth is that they weren't. It was probably inevitable from the moment Bucky came barreling down that alley, but the rest of it... It happened gradually, over the course of years, until they were so firmly attached to one another that it felt fundamentally wrong to say  _Steve_  without adding  _and Bucky.)_

 

* * *

 

It really starts in the spring of 1931, when Bucky is fourteen and Steve is still twelve, and it's because of Billy Thompson, who never really gives up on beating the crap outta Steve at every opportunity. 

Billy Thompson is sixteen now, and not in school anymore, and doesn’t have a job, and gets his pocket money outta other people's pockets. Steve catches him at it -- beating the snot out of the youngest McReady kid, who's even smaller than Steve. Naturally this leads to a fight. Bucky’s at baseball practice, so there’s no one to save them this time. By the time Billy’s through, Steve can barely walk in a straight line, and the poor McReady kid can’t hardly stand on his own two feet.

Steve walks the McReady kid home before heading home himself. He barely makes it, with one eye swollen nearly shut and his rusty handkerchief held to his nose. (For some reason, this incident will be the beginning of Steve’s bad reputation. Maybe it’s the way he stumbles through the neighborhood twice, glaring and covered in blood and bruises. Maybe it’s the way he stubbornly insists that he’s the one who started the fight.)

Steve’s only been home for a few hours before Bucky turns up, hands on hips, not taking no for an answer when Mrs. Rogers tries to insist that Steve can’t come out right now. No one can say no to Buck, for long. Turns out that Mrs. Rogers has some errands to run, so Bucky promises to take over the job of keeping an eye on Steve. He’s swears that they won’t have any fun while she’s away, because Steve is grounded for starting a fight.

Steve’s got a chunk of melting ice wrapped in a towel pressed to his face, and his nose is a new exciting shape -- a bit crooked and a lot swollen, even after his ma set the bone.

“Who was it? Billy Thompson?” Bucky challenges, once Mrs. Rogers has left. “I heard the McReady kid got it too.”

“I started the fight, he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Steve insists, blinking fast, with a pugnacious set to his jaw.

“Steven Grant Rogers, I hope you’re planning to confess that lie on Sunday.”

“Thought you didn’t go to church,” Steve says, sullen.

Bucky gives him a flat look. “My _ma_ doesn’t go to church. She’s _Jewish.”_

Steve blinks. “Oh. But you're..." 

"I go to church with my Pa, out Vinegar Hill way, with the rest of the Barnes cousins. I'm a goddamn altar boy, thank you very goddamn much."

"So you're not..."

"I ain't  _not_ Jewish either." Now Bucky looks pugnacious. “That a problem?”

Steve considers this, seriously, as he considers all things. He doesn't quite get it, if he's honest with himself. He can't imagine being anything by halves. He can't imagine being two different things at the same time. But whatever else Bucky is, or isn't, or isn't _not,_ he's been a good friend to Steve. The only friend Steve has, the only friend he really wants. If Bucky wants to live in the ocean and be a fish, Steve will find a way to visit. “No,” he decides. "It's not a problem."

“Better not be.”

“It’s _not.”_

“You know what _is_ a problem?” Bucky gives Steve a _look._

Steve narrows his eyes. “Billy Thompson?”

“Billy Thompson,” Bucky agrees. He looks real resentful about it, though. They've had this argument a coupla times now. Bucky insists that Steve should back off, stay away from Thompson's turf. Steve refuses to do that. 

“He’s not gonna stop,” Steve says.

Bucky sighs heavily, and Steve braces himself to get into the argument again. But Bucky surprises him by just saying: “Yeah, I know.”

“You’re not gonna say it’s not your problem?”

“It _wasn’t_ my problem,” Bucky complains. “But _you’re_ not gonna stop either, so here we are. What are we gonna do about him?”

Steve stares at him through his one eye that isn’t swollen shut.

“What?” Bucky says, looking mulish and annoyed.

“This is my fight,” Steve says. “Buck, you don't have to--”

“Yeah I do. You’re an idiot, but you’re my friend. So come on.” Bucky looks to Steve, raises his brows. “What’s the plan?”

That’s the first time Bucky looks to Steve and says _what’s the plan?_ It won’t be the last. Steve doesn’t know why that’s the way it goes, but that is the way it goes. Even though Buck is older, and stronger, and he’s not the one with a broken nose, he looks to Steve, without even needing to think about it. It’s easy as breathing -- easier, in Steve’s case. And it sets the pattern for years to come. Steve finds a problem (usually facefirst) and Bucky raises both brows and says: _what’s the plan?_

In retrospect, that’s probably why it’s always _Steve and Bucky_ , when by rights it should be _Bucky and Steve._  But Bucky always lets him take the lead, always lets him make the plans, and call the shots. 

 

They talk through it in circles over the next coupla days, while Steve’s still grounded. The trouble is that Billy isn’t scared of a beatdown. Not with his pa being the way he is. Billy might run away from a fight he can't win, but he always comes back -- with friends. So it won’t work to just have Bucky teach him a lesson in how to take a punch. That kinda lesson won’t stick to Billy Thompson. They need to make him _scared._ But Billy isn’t scared of much of anything.

Finally, it hits Steve: like a bolt of lightning out of a clear blue sky, he knows exactly how to make Billy Thompson stop. It's like an adrenaline rush: heady and exhilarating. He knows what to do, he knows how to do it, and he knows it'll work. If Steve's addicted to anything, he's addicted to this: the feeling he gets when he solves a problem.

Unfortunately for Bucky, the solution to this particular problem hits Steve at two in the morning, when Bucky is spending the night at Steve’s because Mrs. Rogers is real bad at being a disciplinarian.

“Bucky,” Steve says quietly. He’s crouched on the floor, next to the couch cushions where Bucky is sleeping.

“Mm?” Bucky says without opening his eyes. “Stf? Mwhsit?”

“Bucky, _listen._ Everyone -- _everyone_ \-- is scared of the nuns.”

Bucky finally opens one eye. “Mmwhut?”

“The _nuns,_  Bucky, wake up!” Steve hisses.

Bucky groans softly and sits up. He rubs his face. “The... nuns,” he repeats, slow and slurred. He closes his eyes.

“The nuns,” Steve says, enthusiastic. “They’ll put the fear of God in him.”

“In who?”

 _“Billy Thompson,”_ Steve says. “Can you imagine if Sister Agatha catches him beating up someone -- _behind the church?”_

“Steve. Pal. Friend. Go back to sleep, or Sister Agatha will catch _me_ beating you up behind the church.”

 

Steve doesn’t go back to sleep. But he does refrain from talking to Bucky about it again until after Buck’s had a few more hours’ rest and a cup of coffee.

“It’ll stunt your growth,” Steve says, nodding at the coffee. “I should know,” he adds, like the asshole he truly, truly is.

Bucky just takes a pointed sip and glares murderously over the rim of his mug. Steve’s mom is already out at work so they’ve got the run of the Rogers’s shoebox apartment, at least until Bucky has to go down to the docks, where he’s running errands for his pa to earn pocket money. “So what’s this dumb idea of yours?” he says.

Steve whips out his sketchbook and flips to the map he’s drawn of the area around eighth and tenth.

“Holy shit, Steve, are we pranking the kid or planning an invasion?”

Steve gives him a flat look. “Ya gonna help me or not?”

Bucky huffs, rolls his eyes. “Of course I’ll help you. Punk.”

 

* * *

 

It takes them a month to work out the kinks in the plan. The timing is crucial; if Bucky isn’t in the right place at the right time, Steve will get the shit beaten out of him with no one to stop it. There’s a million tiny things that could go wrong -- they need tactical flexibility, back-up plans from B to Z, and a lot of things to go right.

It’s not the best plan of attack Steve will ever come up with, but given that it’s his first, it’s not bad.

 

* * *

 

June 1931: Steve comes out of the corner store on tenth with a comic book and his change still in his open palm. He pauses there, counting the pennies he’s got left, then turns to head back home.

“Rogers!” comes the familiar voice behind him. Steve stiffens, looks back over his shoulder, and sure enough, there’s Billy, with Jack and Eddie at his sides. “Thought I told you not to come here.”

“Crap!” Steve says, and then starts running.

“Hey!” Billy shouts, and a moment later Steve hears him following.

Steve plotted his route carefully. He turns down the next alley, glancing back to make sure that Billy is still following. His heart's already pounding in his chest, but he ignores it. He’s just got to run a couple blocks. He can make it.

He turns, crosses the street and dives into another alley. He stops to catch his breath. He braces both hands on his knees just for a minute, until he hears Billy behind him. “Thought you were done running from your beatings, Rogers. Guess you’re a chicken after all, huh?”

Steve bolts again, to the end of the alley, then left, then right, then over a stack of boxes, and then--

“Shit,” Jack says behind him. “Billy no way, we can’t, not here.”

Steve whirls, fists raised. He’s got his back to the back of the church, and the wrath of God in his eyes.

Billy hesitates. Jack and Eddie are both stepping away, shaking their heads. They run for it, while Billy’s still lingering.

Steve grins, triumphant, shit-eating. “Gotcha. Who’s chicken now, huh?”

That makes Billy set his jaw and step onto hallowed ground with his fists raised. They square off. Steve doesn’t throw the first punch -- but in the end, neither does Billy. He doesn't throw any punches, because this ain't a boxing match. There's no rules, and Billy is pissed, more pissed than Steve anticipated. He doesn’t go for Steve’s face or his gut. He bats away the block Steve’s got up, grabs Steve by the ear, and just bashes his head against the side of the church.

Ringing agony fills Steve’s skull. The world lurches sickly under him and he feels his knees go weak, feels his legs fold underneath him as he drops. And then Billy is kicking him; kicking him hard in the stomach, too hard. He doesn’t have time to wonder where Bucky is, doesn’t have time to try and fight back. He can’t catch his breath, between Billy’s boot in his gut and the stone wall behind him. Something inside him goes _crack_ and he has to scream.

“William Thompson!” shouts a woman’s voice, outraged.

Billy jumps back sharpish. Steve curls in on himself, tears and blood dripping down towards the paving stones under his cheek.

“I-- I--” Billy is stammering, terrified.

“Boy, what do you think you’re doing?” says a man’s voice.

 _That_ makes Steve open his eyes, because Bucky was supposed to bring a nun, but not the priest too. Father Riley is a good guy, but not nearly as stern and scary as the nuns are. Steve’s vision is swimming, but there are three figures back there, in the open side door of the church. There is a nun, Sister Agatha, just like they’d planned. But there’s a man with her, in a suit, and with his hair slicked back. Steve doesn’t recognize him for a minute, because he’s never seen Mr. Thompson clean shaven and wearing a suit.

Behind the two of them is Bucky, his chin dipped down and his arms folded across his chest. He looks… With the light behind and above him, and the shadows deep on his face, he looks like a picture Steve once saw once in an art book. A picture of a statue. _La genie du mal,_ the Lucifer of Leige: dark, and brooding, and kind of beautiful.

“Sir,” Billy says, from somewhere above Steve’s head. The kid sounds terrified. If half the stories about Mr. Thompson are true, he’s right to be.

“Don’t speak,” Mr. Thompson says. “Sister Agatha, forgive me, but I need to teach my son a lesson.”

“Of course,” Sister Agatha says, but even she sounds a little shaken and unsure (and Steve has personally been on the receiving end of her discipline -- she's not the kind to hesitate with a birch rod or a paddle)

“No, Sir, please--”

But judging by the jingle of Mr. Thompson’s belt coming off, it’s too late for that. God -- Billy's going to get his whipping right here in the alley, Steve realizes, and even he doesn’t want to see that.  He closes his eyes tight. The world is spinning too much anyway, having his eyes shut cuts back on the nausea.

“Sister Agatha...” Bucky’s voice.

“James, can you take Steven home?” Sister Agatha says.

“Of course,” Bucky says, and the next thing Steve knows, Bucky is there, gently shifting him, lifting him. Steve hisses and clutches his side. Between his stuttering heart and his aching ribs, he doesn’t think he can stand.

“Come on, pal,” Bucky says softly. And then he’s practically carrying Steve, his big, broad hands gently tugging Steve’s arm across his shoulders. Bucky’s a little taller than him now, Steve realizes. Bucky's just hitting his growth spurt, but Steve's probably done growing. Odds are, he’s had the last of looking down at Bucky Barnes. His breath hitches painfully, and the arm not around Bucky’s shoulders curls around his achy ribs.

“Let’s get you home, okay?” Buck sounds worried. "Is your ma there?"

Steve nods. He can hear Billy Thompson starting to cry, but Bucky's voice is in his good ear, blocking out the worst of it. 

“Okay. Okay. She'll know whether you need to go to the hospital. Let's just get you there. One foot in front of the other, pal.”

Steve keeps his eyes closed, fighting back nausea and letting Bucky guide him to the end of the alley, away from the scene there. He can hear murmurs around him -- people heard the commotion and came to look, which means that there's witnesses to Billy's beating, his humiliation. It'll be all over the neighborhood before sunset. Steve has a terrible suspicion. He doesn’t open his eyes -- he’s sure to hurl if he does -- but he grits his teeth and says, lowly: “I thought… we said… a nun.”

“Nun wasn’t gonna cut it, Steve-o,” Bucky says, voice quiet and deadly grim.

And then, Steve knows. Bucky, somehow, arranged for Mr. Thompson to be the one who saw Billy beating Steve behind the church. He must’ve reached out, during the last month, talked the hardened mob enforcer into coming to confession or something, just in time to see Billy beating Steve up on hallowed ground. Even the mob had rules about stuff like that. And they didn’t tolerate rule breakers.

“Oh my god,” Steve says under his breath. “You shouldn’t have -- we had a plan.”

 _“You_ had a plan. A good plan. I just… improved on it a little.”

“How is this an improvement?" Steve hisses. "Bucky, Mr. Thompson put his wife in the hospital. More than once.”

“Yeah, and his son has put you in the hospital for the last damn time,” Bucky says sharply. “Listen pal, if you’re gonna start fights, you gotta be prepared to let me finish ‘em. Cuz that’s what’s gonna happen. I ain’t just gonna let you... You're my best friend, Steve.”

It lands between them; a long silence, the weight of it. It’s the first time Bucky has said it. _You’re my best friend._ It tugs at Steve’s chest, worse than the asthma or his bad heart, or what he suspects is a cracked rib. He swallows thickly. _You’re my best friend too,_ Steve wants to say. _You’re my only friend,_ would probably be more accurate.

It’s unfathomable that Bucky would pick Steve as a best friend. Everybody loves Bucky. Everybody. Bucky could have anyone as a best friend, anyone he wanted. And he’s choosing Steve. Nobody even _likes_ Steve. No one’s ever stood up for him like this, certainly. His Ma stands up for him, in her own way. But she wouldn’t do something like this: this was dark, and scary. Beyond the pale. He didn’t even tell Steve, because he must’ve known that Steve would say no, would call it off. But Bucky went ahead with it anyway.

Bucky is _ruthless,_  Steve realizes. And all that ruthlessness is at Steve’s disposal. In the distance, behind them, Billy Thompson wails.

“Jesus,” Steve says.

“My friends call me Bucky,” Bucky snarks back, sharp and irreverent.

 

* * *

 

Steve ends up in the hospital with cracked ribs and a concussion. Bucky brings him his homework and tells him that it looks like Billy ain't shaking down the neighborhood kids no more. Steve's still stuck in the hospital for his thirteenth birthday, but his ma bought him some new drawing pencils and Bucky jokingly got him an old field tactics manual from the Great War.

Steve's still stuck in bed, and he devours it, cover to cover. He thinks it's probably the first thing that wasn't a pulp or a comic or an art book that really grabbed his interest and wouldn't let go. It’s dry as dust and should be boring as hell, but Steve can hardly bring himself to look up from it.

 

By the time he can bring himself to look up from it, things have changed. Something has shifted in the world of the adults; some change in the economic winds. The rent goes up in their part of town.

For the Rogers household, this means yet another change of landlord. But this time, a cousin of Steve's Da helps Mrs. Rogers find a place in Vinegar Hill where the rent ain't too bad. Steve comes home from the hospital to a new apartment. He doesn't know it yet, but it's the last apartment he'll share with his ma.

For the Barneses, the rising rent presents an opportunity of sorts. Bucky says his folks have been looking for a place to buy for a while, and the rent hike convinced them to take the plunge, despite everything. They came out of the crash okay, and it's a decent time to buy if you can. It turns out that they've _also_ got some cousins who are looking to sell their dumpy little townhouse in Vinegar Hill. It's just down the street from Steve's tenement building, and the place is littered with Barneses and Rogerses and other cousins with different names -- most of them beginning with O. They didn't call Vinegar Hill _Irishtown_ for no reason, but by the time the Rogers and Barneses end up there, half the neighbors are Lithuanian. If Steve knows one thing, he knows this: Things change. 

 

Long and short of it is: Steve never sees Billy Thompson again. He counts it as his first victory. _Their_  first victory, as a team, as a unit.

  

* * *

  

A new neighborhood means new kids and new bullies. With only each other to rely on, Steve and Bucky close ranks, so tight that it becomes impossible to imagine anyone ever prying them apart. Steve ain’t sure whether it’s that he’s clinging like a limpet to the rock that is Bucky, or if Bucky’s got hold of him like a mama bear with her cubs, but somewhere along the line they’ve become inseparable.

Steve’s still _Steve,_  so of course he still starts fights, but now, Bucky’s there to finish them more often than not. The crazy kid comes barreling down alleyways and into back lots and onto the playground, swinging his fists like hammers and swearing up a blue streak (unless there are girls around -- he’s always real respectful around girls and teachers.) Not so much around Steve.

“Jesus, Stevie, what the hell were you fuckin’ thinking? Startin’ a fight with that asshole, _Christ.”_

“Come on, Buck, _language.”_

“You want me to have concern for your poor innocent ears, you gotta stop doin’ shit that gives me ulcers, punk.”

It’s like Steve’s got a sixth sense for finding trouble, and Bucky’s got a sixth sense for finding Steve. That’s a blessing and a curse: the nuns and teachers become pronounced in their opinion that Steve is a Bad Influence and Bucky would be better off without him. They might be right about that.

 

But it isn’t all about fighting. Bucky starts coming over to Steve’s after school, to get a bit of peace from the noise at his place, he says. He and Steve do their homework at the kitchen table, and half the time that turns into an impromptu tutoring session. Bucky may be left handed, but he’s a straight-A student, and he’s got a head for math like no one’s business. Steve helps him with his handwriting, and also geography -- Bucky doesn't have much time for anything farther away than Coney Island, but Steve teaches him the difference between England and Ireland, at least. Steve manages to scrape his way up from the very bottom of his class to something slightly more respectable. Mrs. Rogers is more grateful than she can say, and dotes on Bucky almost more than she dotes on Steve.

 

* * *

 

The winter before he turns fourteen, Steve’s shitty health takes another blow. He catches something. He's feverish, with a sore throat, and a cough that’s not quite bad enough for the hospital, but is definitely bad enough to keep him home from school.

He lies in bed, hot and cold by turns, too tired to do anything and too wheezy to sleep properly. He flops around and hates the whole world and everything in it. He tries to take his mind off it by drawing, but there’s nothing to draw that he hasn’t drawn a million times before, and nothing to read that he hasn’t practically memorized. His mother keeps alternately checking on him and running around the building trying to see if there’s anyone who can look after Steve overnight, while she’s on shift at the hospital. But they're still new here, and she hasn't been able to pick up much Lithuanian.

He drops off into a fitful sleep sometime in the afternoon only to be woken by something heavy landing on top of him.

He flails awake and looks down to find Bucky’s schoolbag lying in his lap.

“Good morning, Sunshine,” Bucky says, which makes Steve glare.

“It’s afternoon.” Steve’s nobody’s sunshine; he’s a sourfaced little punk, and Bucky knows that the nickname annoys the crap outta him.

Bucky grins that movie-star smile of his. “Got your homework. Also, I’m the night nurse.”

“Ah geeze, Bucky,” Steve says, his voice hoarse and low from the coughing. “You don’t have to--”

“Pal.” Bucky sits on the edge of the bed, dropping down hard enough to bounce Steve a little. “I spilled something on Becca’s favorite dress and it ain’t coming out.” Becca’s barely more than a year younger than Bucky, more like a twin sister than a baby one, and she’s just as scary as Bucky can be, from what Steve’s heard. “By staying here tonight, you are saving me from a slow and painful death,” Bucky says, and Steve honestly can’t tell if he’s lying or not. “Come on. I’ll walk you through your math lesson.”

 

Later that night, after dinner but before her shift at the hospital, Steve’s Ma pulls Bucky out into the hall and talks to him for a long time. Steve’s kinda out of it, but when Bucky comes back in, he stares a bit too hard and long. There’s a little vertical line between his brows that Steve’s never seen before.

Steve can guess what the talk was about. _Here’s what to do if he can’t breathe, here’s what to do if he starts holding his chest like this, here’s what to do if you can’t wake him up. If it gets this bad, come get me. If it’s worse than that, this is the number for the doctor._

“I got something on my face?” Steve rasps, sticking his chin out like he’s gonna start a fight about it.

Bucky rolls his eyes. “Your nose, unfortunately.” It never did heal straight after Billy broke it.

“I’ll take _my_ nose over _your_ chin any day of the week,” Steve shoots back, which makes Bucky lean over and punch him on the arm. So that’s okay.

 

Steve draws Bucky for the first time that day, after they’re done with homework, and Bucky buries his nose in some pulp detective story, eyes fixed on the words, entranced and perfectly still for once. Steve sketches him out, just the outline of him at first, and then filling in the details. He’s the only thing in the room Steve hasn’t drawn before, and he can’t get the curve of his mouth right, the almost-pout of it. He doesn't really doesn’t leap off the page until Steve shades the shadows darker, thinking of Bucky in the door of the church, and the Lucifer of Leige. Even so, it’s not quite right. Steve isn’t at all happy with it.

He turns the page and instead sketches out a cartoon Bucky dressed as a dime novel detective. Bucky  _loves_ it.

 

Steve’s cold gets worse that night. He still can’t sleep because of all the coughing. He convinces Bucky to get some sleep, out in the other room. At first, Bucky does, pulling the sofa cushions off the couch and sleeping on the floor in the living room. By midnight, Steve’s still awake and coughing so hard it feels like claws in his throat, each cough punctuated by a small, pained sound he can’t keep back.

He opens his eyes at the creak of his bedroom door, and Bucky is there, peering in, looking strangely small, eyes wide.

“Sorry,” Steve croaks, utterly wretched. He’s so tired. He just wants to sleep. He wants to be able to breathe, wants to be able to swallow without it hurting and he can’t, and maybe he’ll feel better tomorrow, for a little while, but it’s always this, always. He's never gonna be healthy, he's never gonna be _normal,_ he's never gonna be-- “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” he says, over and over.

And then he’s crying, which doesn’t help a goddamn thing, and is so, so humiliating. He never wanted Bucky to see him like this: Bucky, who’s healthy, and strong, and _good._  Bucky, who through some miracle isn’t disgusted by Steve, by how weak and sickly he is. Steve covers his face, tries to muffle the hiccuping sobs, but can’t. It’s like a  coughing fit: it seizes him and it won't let go. He can’t stop it any more than he can stop--

“Hey.” Bucky's voice is gentle.

Steve peers around his hands. At some point, Bucky must have gotten up, because now Bucky is offering him a wet towel. He doesn’t look disgusted. He pulls his mouth to one side sympathetically and offers the towel again. Steve sniffs, and takes it. Bucky sits patiently by while Steve cleans his face off.

“Thanks,” Steve says, ragged. “I’m sorry, I just. I hate this.”

“Yeah. Me too.” Bucky looks as wretched as Steve feels but he clearly didn't think through what he just said...

Steve gives him a look. “Gee thanks, pal.”

Bucky's face scrunches into a grimace. “I mean I hate that you feel this way,” he tries to amend.

Steve just wrinkles up his brow at Bucky.

“I mean, it’s not about me, but I...” He makes a face. And the uncharacteristic tongue-tied-ness actually makes Steve laugh, kinda. “Shaddup, you know what I mean.

Steve chucks the towel at him, and Bucky squeals, batting the disgusting rag away. “Ugh! Steve!”

“Go back to the living room,” Steve says. “Try to sleep. No point both of us being miserable.”

“Pal, if you’re miserable, I’m miserable, whether I’m here or on the goddamn moon,” Bucky says, frankly.

Steve swallows and winces. “Sap,” he rasps.

“Yeah, yeah, so sue me. I’m bringing the couch cushions in here.”

It turns out that Bucky’s snoring is louder even than Steve’s coughing had been.

 

Morning finds Steve’s fever broken, his voice completely gone, but his throat a little clearer. Steve can stand on his own, more or less, and his mom declares that he’s still not well enough to go to school, but he can get up and move around the apartment if he likes.

While they’re having breakfast (Steve’s mom already lying down in her room) Bucky is still staring at Steve. Buck's all dressed and ready for school, but it’s not time to go yet. And he’s watching Steve with that little lone furrow between his brows.

 _What?_ Steve mouths, because his voice is beyond shot.

Bucky shakes his head, but that furrow’s still there. “I just.” he shakes his head. “It don’t make sense. I never met anyone with more spark than you, but it’s…”

Steve lifts a brow, unimpressed. He’s heard this too, though more often from adults than kids his own age. Grownups talk about how it’s a shame, how he’s like a flame being slowly smothered by his illness. Snuffed out too soon. Burning twice as bright for half as long. Like that’s supposed to make him feel better?

“It ain’t fair,” Bucky says softly.

Steve rolls his eyes eloquently.  _No shit, Sherlock._

“Why would--” Bucky cuts himself off, but something in Steve hears an echo, of himself, of a question he asks almost every week.

Steve shrugs. “You’re the altar boy,” he says, his voice a squeaky nothing. “You ask Him what He was thinking, cuz I got no idea.”

 

That Sunday, Steve’s well enough to sit in the pews, so he goes. Bucky’s there, of course. Steve's gotten used to seeing Bucky helping out with the service, now that he and his ma go to the same church as the Barneses. Normally, Bucky wears his _sucking up to teacher_ look -- the one he uses when he wants something from a grownup. But now, his eyes are flat in a way that Steve recognizes. It’s the face Bucky makes right before he jumps in to finish a fight.

Steve wants to tell him there’s no point picking fights with God. Steve knows. Why does Bucky think Steve picks fights with everyone else?

 

After the service is over, Bucky finds Steve and pulls him aside. “Hey,” he says, “if you’re up for it, Ma would love to have you over for dinner on Tuesday.”

Steve blinks, caught off-guard. Bucky comes over to his place all the time, but this is he first time he's invited Steve over. He's always complaining about how loud it is there, how he can't get away from his sisters. Steve had wondered if that was all it was, or if Bucky was also a little... ashamed is a strong word, but he's real touchy about his Ma. Steve's a little apprehensive about meeting them all, if he's honest. He's not great at first impressions. What if he says something dumb?

Tuesday, though -- Steve's mom has the evening shift, and if he doesn't go to the Barnes place, he'll be stuck with tinned beans and yesterday’s bread. He’s not _stupid._ He nods. “Yeah, that’s real nice of her. Thank you.”

 

* * *

 

It's the first time Steve visits, but its not the last. The Barneses’ house may not be the Ritz, but by comparison to the places Steve’s lived, it’s a palace. There’s _three_ bedrooms, and Bucky’s got one all to himself (it ain’t much bigger than a closet, but it’s _his.)_  They’ve even got a skinny rectangle of concrete out back where little Jeanie and Susan can bounce a ball back and forth to each other under the laundry lines.

The Barneses are proud as punch about their new house, but Bucky seems even prouder to have Steve as his best pal. He brings Steve in and shows him off like he’s a prize Bucky won at the fair. “Ma! Pa! This is my pal Steve!” he says, chest all puffed out. It makes Steve flustered and unsure, which only makes Bucky laugh at him, a cocky grin all over his dumb face.

With the mouth Buck’s got on him, at first Steve thinks that Mr. Barnes must be a real mean guy (though he never shows it at church, of course.) But when he first meets them all, it’s _Mrs._ Barnes swearing up a blue streak in the kitchen (until she sees Steve is there) while Mr. Barnes (who has a good, steady job down at the docks) wrangles Bucky’s baby sisters. George Barnes is a gentle giant, who takes the kids to church on Sundays, and helps old ladies across the street. Winnie Barnes is a real spitfire. She may have married out, but she makes challah bread and sings old songs in Yiddish. She still goes to the Garfield Temple, and the girls sometimes go with her. Sometimes Bucky goes too, even though he’s an altar boy. Steve would expect that to be a point of contention between husband and wife, but somehow, it isn’t. The whole family stands suspended between two worlds and they make it look effortless.

They’re Steve’s heroes from the moment he lays eyes on ‘em. It helps that Mrs. Barnes takes one critical look at his skinny shoulders and gives him a double helping of the best mashed potatoes Steve’s ever had.

So there's Ma and Pa Barnes, and there’s Jeanie and Susan, who are five and six years younger than Bucky, respectively, and Becca and Bucky, squabbling with each other and watching out for the younger girls like hawks. Between the three girls screeching and Mrs. Barnes’s exasperated swearing and Mr. Barnes singing in his big bass voice and the wireless blaring out of the kitchen... They’re all so loud and so much and all the time. Bucky, unbelievably, is the quietest and stillest of them all. Steve can understand why Bucky spends so much time at the Rogers shoebox apartment.

Being in the Barnes House is a bit like being in the middle of an ongoing explosion -- but Steve’s always been a firecracker, so he fits right in. The Barneses are like bricks, big and square and solid enough to build foundations on. Steve's just a twig by comparison, but it's like he was always meant to be there. They laugh as easy as they yell and Steve loves them all like family.

 

(Later, Steve finds out that there had been a brother between Becca and Susan -- Teddy. Bucky remembers him a little. Becca only remembers the funeral.)

 

 _(Much_ later, Steve finds himself at a brownstone in Park Slope (nicer than the old Barnes place in Vinegar Hill) around a Thanksgiving table. There are Proctors there, and Gillespies, and Chens. Not a single Barnes present, but still a sea of faces that all echo with the memory of Bucky’s smile.)

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, you can try to tell me that Steve has no family in the future, but I choose to believe that the Barnes Descendants aggressively adopt him and make him come to Family Dinners. You can't take this from me, it's the only thing that gives me hope. 
> 
>  
> 
> “Resources” “used:”
> 
> Demographic info about New York in the ‘40s: [Check out this neat as heck interactive map thingy](http://www.1940snewyork.com/#)
> 
> La genie du mal (don’t know how accurate it would be for Steve to have seen a photo of it, but it’s one of my fave ever sculptures, check out [this post](https://caffeinatedmusing.tumblr.com/post/167636264878/1-lange-du-mal-by-joseph-geefs-2-le-genie-du) about it)


	3. When Love's to Blame

## 3

 _It's so hard to keep up_  
_With troubles that creep up_  
_From out of nowhere_  
_**When love's to blame** _

_-[Ill Wind](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaZVcDZguDo) by Harold Arlen and Ted Kohler, 1934._

 

Steve knows right from wrong. Even with things that aren’t easy, he knows.

Like in the fall of 1930 when he saw a skinny little girl stealing apples from a fat, greasy vendor. He didn’t say anything; stealing was wrong, but a little girl going hungry? That was worse. Or back when he was ten, when he read through the eugenics pamphlets and knew in a flash that they were full of bullshit, no matter how authoritative and supposedly scientific they were. Or the time in ‘32 when he found Mark Maloney with his hand up Alice Bradshaw’s skirt even though she kept saying no. He’d known he had to stop it. (That was the second time he’d gotten his nose broken, and Alice had shouted at him after, with tears running down her face, but he knew that stopping it had been the right thing.)

Even when his dumb body won’t let him do the right thing, and even when he wants to do something else, something easier, there’s an unwavering compass needle in his guts that tells him what’s right, and what’s wrong.

But then there’s Bucky. Bucky throws off Steve’s compass something fierce, and he knows it.

 

* * *

 

It’s 1933, and everyone Steve’s age has gone nuts, in his opinion. Romance burns through the neighborhood like wildfire, like TB. There’s this frantic rush of pairing off, of breaking up, of broken hearts and betrayals and the odd girl “going to stay with relatives upstate” for an unspecified amount of time.

Steve doesn’t really get it, except that… well, the spring before he turns fifteen, he’s sitting up late, unable to sleep because of a slight cough that’s just irritating enough to keep him awake. It’s warm, and he’s sitting by the open window, sketching the city at night and trying to distract himself from his dumb, sickly body.

Down the street, there’s a jazz club, and it’s hopping tonight. There’s a handsome couple, not too much older than Steve, trying to get in, but it must be packed, because they come out only moments later, the girl laughing and the guy with one hand on the back of his head, sheepish. The music drifts out the windows of the club, tinny and muffled to Steve’s ears, but it must be louder over there. The couple is standing under a streetlight now, and suddenly the guy drops his hand, holds it out, wiggles his fingers.

The girl laughs and takes the offered hand. He reels her in, slips an arm around her waist and then they’re dancing right there in the street, swaying together, cheek to cheek.

It would be something to hold someone like that, he thinks. It would be something else to be with someone who actually wanted to be with him. No one really wants Steve around except his ma, and maybe Bucky. But for the first time, Steve gets it, thinks that it would be nice -- awful nice, actually -- to have a partner worth dancing with.

 

* * *

 

It’s August; Buck is sixteen and Steve is fifteen when Sarah Rogers gets so sick that she goes to the hospital, and makes Steve stay with the Barneses, so his bad lungs won’t catch whatever her bad lungs have already got. Steve is real sullen about it, red-eyed and furious that his ma isn’t letting him take care of her, when it’s his turn, dammit. He should be able to do this one stupid thing.

The Barneses don’t let him stew over it though. Winnie fusses over him in her strange, gruff way and George takes them all to Coney Island. It’s a good day, and Steve almost forgets to worry about his ma.

Almost.

 

It’s Tuesday now, and Steve’s ma is doing better, but she’s staying in the hospital until tomorrow, just in case. Buck did an early shift, helping his pa down at the docks while Steve went to visit her. She looked so small in the bed, and the flowers he brought her didn’t do much to brighten the room, but she smiled, and promised that it would all be okay. Steve didn’t quite believe her, but he pretended to, for her sake.

Now the sun is starting to set, and he and Buck are both back at the Barnes place. It’s hot as hell, and Mrs. Barnes forbids them from getting underfoot while she cooks, so they end up sitting out on the fire escape, trying not to overheat. They’re lounging around in their undershirts and trousers. Buck is sweaty, and he’s also still a bit grimy from the docks. He’ll have to wash up before dinner if he doesn’t want his Ma to shout at him, but right now, Buck is rambling -- voice low and eyes dreamy -- about the future.

Bucky loves to talk about the future, has ever since he was a kid and they were both reading Buck Rogers comics under the covers. They’re older now, so Buck dreams about a future with fewer ray guns and more financial aspirations. He’s trying to save up money for college because he wants to be an engineer, he’s decided.

They’ve talked about it before, but Steve doesn’t mind listening to it all again. Bucky’s going to take a year off after high school, work at the docks full time, he says. Bucky will have enough saved up for college by the time Steve graduates (Mrs. Rogers insists that Steve finish high school, even though Steve would like nothing better than to drop out just as soon as he can.)

Once Steve graduates, he and Bucky can get their own place, maybe. Steve can go to art school, and Bucky can go to engineering school, and they can have their own place together. Buck’s real keen about getting his own place, away from his sisters, for vague, unspecified reasons that probably have to do with the way he’s been smiling at Mary O’Reilly.

Steve lets the talk wash over him. He’s sketching little half-complete drawings -- of the clouds, the angle of the street, the kids playing ball. But he keeps coming back to Bucky.

Bucky lying on his back, staring up and into the future he’s imagining, with a little half-smile on his lips and his eyes half-lidded. He wiggles his fingers through the hot, still, stifling air, like he’s conjuring his dreams right in front of his eyes, even if he’s the only one who can see them. The two of them, sharing an apartment, going to school. 

“Just you and me, Stevie,” Buck says, grinning.

Steve hums vague agreement, brows furrowed, focused on getting the shape of Buck’s jaw right. He doesn’t know how in hell he’s supposed to afford art school, but it’s a nice thought.

“Well, I mean, till some dame figures out how to keep you outta trouble. Hey! Maybe we can live down the hall from each other, after.” Buck turns his head and gives Steve a half-smile. “You can name your kid after me.”

Steve scoffs. “If I did have a kid, I wouldn’t saddle him with a dumb name like Bucky, I’m not _that_ mean.” He tugs his eyes up from the sketchbook. “Anyway. I’m not gonna get married, Buck. Be realistic.”

Bucky sits up sharply, brows coming together. “Whaddya mean, realistic? You’re gonna find some spitfire dame who won’t put up with your fucking bullshit, and you two are gonna have a dozen idiot kids. White picket fence. The works.”

Steve wrinkles his nose. “White picket fence?”

“Fine, a brownstone somewhere, whatever.”

“I’m not getting married, Buck. What kinda dame is going to want to go with me?”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “A _smart_ one?”

Steve’s shaking his head already, looking back down at the sketchbook propped up on his knees. He's already decided: that's not for him. He’s known that for years. Anyway, after that last sore throat, he got a second bout of rheumatic fever, not as bad as the first, when he was a kid, but bad enough. He doesn’t want to say to Buck that he’s not gonna live long enough to get married, but he knows that’s the most likely outcome. “I dunno, Buck…”

“Don’t gimme that,” Bucky says, like he can read Steve's mind. He sounds almost angry. He kicks at Steve’s foot with his own. “Wife. Kids. Brownstone by the park. You’re gonna have it all, Rogers.”

“Nah. That’s more your bag than mine,” Steve says, shrugging one shoulder and not  looking up.

“Pal, there ain’t a dame in the world who’ll put up with my bullshit long enough to marry me,” Bucky says flatly.

Steve looks up in time to see Bucky tip his head back and drop with a sigh to sprawl out across the fire escape. “What do you mean by that?”

Bucky shrugs, and doesn’t open his eyes. “Nothin’ I guess. Just… rather hang out with you, I s’pose.” Steve thinks about how Bucky looks at Mary O'Reilly, and then he thinks about how Mary O'Reilly looks at him -- like Steve is something she found on the bottom or her shoe.  _Rather hang out with you, I s'pose,_ Bucky said. It makes Steve feel warm on a level deeper than sun on skin. He frowns at Bucky. Dappled sun paints warm light and shadows over Bucky's torso. Sweat glistens on his collarbones. 

Steve swallows and looks down before Bucky can see him staring. He’s suddenly, unexpectedly terrified of how much he wants that future with Buck -- the one where it’s just the two of them, not the stupid one where Steve lives in a brownstone with some dame and has a kid named Bucky who probably will end up being all Rogers and no Barnes at all. Steve isn’t at all sure he even wants to meet that poor kid.

But… _Just you and me, Stevie._

That. He wants that. He wants that so bad it hurts.

Steve knows longing as intimately as he knows pain. The two are pretty closely related, after all. Looking at kids running up and down the street and wishing so desperately to join them. Staring at the Macy’s Christmas display, at all the things he'd never be able to afford. That dancing couple. Steve _knows_ longing.

And this? He looks over his own half-finished sketch of Bucky, the way his pencil has traced the lines and curves of Bucky, the angle of his jaw, the tilt of his smile.

This is longing, even if he doesn’t know what it means.

 

* * *

 

It’s 1934, and Steve feels like he’s being left behind, again. He doesn’t seem to have the drive for dating that other kids his age do. Ma says he’s a late bloomer, but Steve can’t help wondering if this is just another thing that being sick is going to take away from him. Bucky is seventeen, and seems to have endless enthusiasm for dates and flirting and dancing. But Bucky’s handsome now: every dame wants to dance with Bucky.

Steve just can’t quite find the energy to get excited about any of it. He’s content to just resign himself to bachelordom.

But that certainly doesn’t help with the nasty rumors about him. And there are _nasty_ rumors. He’s a skinny guy, a short guy, an _artist._ Of course there are rumors. There’ve been rumors since Steve was _twelve,_ for cryin’ out loud.

In the end, Steve lets Bucky set him up on a couple of double dates that go exactly as well as you’d expect, given that Steve is 80% spite and 20% self-righteous jackassery (according to Bucky.) Bucky even tries to teach Steve to dance, which goes even worse than you’d expect.

“I’m hopeless,” Steve says, after stepping on Bucky’s foot hard enough that Bucky is actually limping a little. “I’m _hopeless.”_

Bucky stops swearing and takes a breath. “You’re not, you’re just -- you think too much.”

“How can you think too much?” Steve says, exasperated. “What does that even _mean?”_

“Means you spend too much time up here--” he flicks the middle of Steve’s forehead, hard. “Dancing doesn’t come from up here, ya dope. _You think too much.”_

“If I did, shouldn’t my grades be better?” Steve retorts. “Face it, pal. I’m never going to get a real date. I am useless at this.”

“You’re not. You just gotta play to your strengths.” Bucky sits, and massages his foot where Steve stomped on it. “Maybe dancing ain’t one of them.”

“Ya think? Look.” Steve sits on the creaky old sofa. “Bucky, I’m not exactly overflowing with strengths, you--”

“Bullshit.” Bucky says, with emphasis. “You’re a great listener, you’re honest, and when you look at things, you really _see_ them.”

Steve screws his face up into an expression of skepticism. “Dames ain’t exactly falling over themselves for someone who _listens.”_

Bucky drops a heavy hand on Steve’s shoulder, and looks him in the eye, one brow lifted. “Buddy. Pal. You know _nothing_ about dames.”

 

* * *

 

The next gal that Bucky sets him up with is the daughter of a friend of Winnie's. Her name is Ruth. She’s not much taller than Steve, and not exactly a looker, but she’s got big, sweet brown eyes and soft dark curls and a button nose that Steve admits to himself is cute as anything.

She’s also got a furtive look on her face when she slips her arm into Steve’s and he picks up pretty quick that she ain’t supposed to be going anywhere with an Irish Catholic boy like him. But, Bucky’s been stepping out with Greta Goldstein lately, and Greta and Ruth are friends, so it all comes together real nice.

They all go to the pictures, and then they go to a dance hall. Bucky and Greta are out on the floor almost as soon as they’re in the door. But Steve remembers what Bucky said, and tries to play to his so-called strengths. He and Ruth get a table, and he gets them some drinks. He asks her questions, and gradually gets her talking by merit of actually _listening_ to what she has to say.

She wants to keep going to school, he learns, maybe become a teacher. She’s got lotsa thoughts about school reform, about the way teaching is done now, and the way it oughta be done, and when she gets started really talking about it, her brown eyes light up warm and she really is beautiful.

He must be staring a bit, because she goes pink all of a sudden and looks away. “Sorry, I’m talking too much,” she apologizes.

“No, not at all,” he says, earnestly. “I like listening. You… Um.”

“What?” she prompts.

“You light up. When you talk about it,” he says, unable to think of anything other than the truth.

And God, the _look_ she gives him, wide-eyed and soft-smiling. She goes even more pink. “Ask me to dance,” she says abruptly.

“I’m not much of a dancer,” Steve warns.

“I don’t care,” she says.

Steve swallows. It’s the first time that a girl has actually _wanted_ to dance with him. “Will you dance with me?” he asks.

“Thought you’d never ask,” she says, taking his hand.

Steve automatically looks for Bucky, who’s across the room with Greta. Bucky’s eyebrows are up, like he’s as surprised as Steve is, and why wouldn’t he be? Steve shrugs one shoulder. Bucky looks a little thunderstruck. Steve can empathize. He feels like he's been hit over the head, and they ain't even dancing yet.

 

Later, Bucky goes one way to walk Greta home, and Steve goes the other way to walk Ruth home. He only stepped on her toes a little, and she’s still pink-cheeked and smiling, and her arm is tucked through his. His heart skips in a way that doesn’t hurt for once.

But then, when they get to the stoop of her building, she tightens her grip on his arm and keeps him going.

“Um,” he says, quietly. “Are we… going somewhere?”

“Nowhere in particular. Just a walk?” she says.

"Sure," Steve agrees. It's a nice night; not too hot, but not too cold either. The moon is out, but the lights of the city are brighter, warmer. Steve's back only hurts a little from all the dancing. He can keep walking for a while.

Ruth takes a deep breath. “I had a nice time tonight.”

“Me too,” Steve says hurriedly. “You’re real swell, Ruth, I--”

Thank God she cuts him off before he can say anything stupid. She just leans right up and plants a soft kiss on his mouth.

It’s over almost before it begins. Just the press of her lips against his, warm and dry and oh so gentle, and then she’s pulling away. She's bright red now, and she looks away quick. “I had a real nice time,” she says again. “And Steve, you’re the best guy I’ve ever gone on a date with, I mean that. Bucky was right, you are something special, but I…”

Steve stares at her, blinking. “You aren’t supposed to date a Catholic,” he says. He knew that, on some level, but it’s hitting him now, what that really means.

She shakes her head. She’s biting her bottom lip.

They keep walking. Steve’s still got her arm tucked through his, and he rubs the back of her hand absently, little circles with his artist’s fingers. Her skin is real soft, warm. He can feel the small bones underneath. He chews his lip and does exactly what Bucky warned him not to do: he thinks.

He thinks about Winifred and George Barnes. They fit together real well, but there’s something else too. He’s seen the way people whisper about Winnie behind her back. He knows that there’s half a dozen Barnes cousins that Bucky’s never met because George’s brother wants nothing to do with him. He knows that Winnie’s own ma won’t speak to her at Temple. George and Winnie make it _look_ easy, but that don’t mean it _is_ easy.

Ruth leans her head against his shoulder and sighs. She smells nice too, he thinks. Like lavender, maybe, and a bit like the dance hall still.

“If I asked you out again, would you say yes?” he asks, quiet, wanting to know. _Needing_ to know, really.

“I’m not sure,” she says, just as quiet. It’s maybe not the answer he would’ve liked to hear, but it’s honest. He’d rather have her be honest with him. “Maybe. I’d want to.”

“But your folks wouldn’t like it.”

“No,” she says with a dry little twist to her mouth. “No, they would not.”

Steve sighs. “I figured.” He bites his lip, then turns his head and kisses her forehead, where it rests against his shoulder. “I won’t ask.”

“I don’t know whether to say thank you or sock you one.”

“Me neither,” Steve says.

“If you change your mind...”

“Yeah,” he says. “You too, you know. But it’s.” He frowns, and knows he’s making that sour lemon face that Bucky mocks him for. “I don’t have much family. It’s just me and my ma. If you’ve got family… Don’t give that up easy. It’s worth a lot, trust me.”

They kiss one more time: a long kiss goodbye at the doorway, and Steve walks back home feeling hollowed out inside, his head spinning with all the maybe-might-have-beens.

 

“How’d it go, Sunshine?” Bucky says, grinning as he catches up with Steve the next day.

Steve’s mouth goes sideways, not just at the nickname.

“Aw, no, Stevie, you were in there _good,_ how did you mess that up?” Bucky says, sounding almost impressed by Steve’s ability to ruin a good thing.

“I didn’t!” Steve protests. _“You’re_ the one who set me up with a girl who wasn’t supposed to date a Catholic.”

“I wasn’t suggesting you _marry_ her or nothin’,” Bucky says. He groans loudly, exasperated. “Would it have hurt you to have some fun?”

“Maybe,” Steve says, brittle.

Bucky draws back, looking over in surprise. “Pal--” he starts.

Steve sighs and ducks his head. “Look, Bucky… Not that I’m not grateful, but I don’t think I’m cut out for this dancing with a different girl every night thing that you do.” He doesn’t say that it feels like he’s gonna be sick with regret for months. He doesn’t say that he kind of hates Bucky right now, doesn’t say that he wishes he’d never met Ruth. It’s stupid, he thinks. People don’t fall in love overnight, that’s not how it works, but it feels like he’s full of what-ifs now: what if he had? What if they’d been happy? What if he actually got to live to a ripe old age with a girl he loved? What if, what if, what if. “I’m not like you, Bucky. I’d rather wait for the right partner,” he says. _My heart can’t take this kind of abuse,_ he thinks.

“Well how the hell are you supposed to find her if you don’t go looking?” Bucky says. Then he reaches out and punches Steve’s arm. “And…” Bucky bites his bottom lip. He has a strange look on his face. Twisted up, a little hurt.  “And this ain’t all about you, ya know.”

“What do you mean?” Steve asks, a little lost.

Bucky rolls his eyes extravagantly. “It was a _double_ date, if you recall. I was there too, and Greta." He jerks one shoulder, an awkward half-shrug. "I wanted her to meet ya.”

”God, why?” Steve asks, baffled. He’s not exactly a selling point. _Hey there, doll, I want you to meet my best pal, he looks like a starving rat and he’s twice as mean._

Bucky sticks out his chin. “I ain’t gonna waste my time on gals who don’t like you, Stevie. And it’s gotta be double dates. I ain’t gonna make you come along as a third wheel, am I? I know I can be a jerk, but I’m not a complete asshole.”

Steve shakes his head, confused. “What?”

“Sometimes it’s just dancing, but any gal who wants to go steady with me oughta know that you… You’re my best friend. You’re part of the package, right? I ain’t gonna marry some dame who can’t stand you.”

Steve tamps down a sudden explosion of fear that clenches his guts. “You thinking of marrying, now?” 

Bucky makes a face, and Steve tries to hide how relieved he is to see that Bucky ain't serious about it. “Not _now,_  now, but…” Bucky shrugs. “Seems inevitable,” he mumbles.

 _“Wow._ That’s exactly the kinda attitude a gal is looking for in her future husband.” Steve puts a hand over his heart. “‘Honey, marriage is inevitable, like death and taxes. Wanna get hitched?’”

“Alright, _Romeo,_ like you know!” Bucky punches Steve’s arm. Steve kicks Bucky’s shin. They end up in a laughing slap-fight that only ends when Steve pinches Bucky’s side, hard, twists viciously, and Bucky cries uncle. Steve’s a dirty fighter.

 

(Steve never sees Ruth again, but sometimes he thinks about her. A few years later, Ruth gets married to a nice Jewish boy who works at a bank and dotes on her, and does more for her than Steve ever could have. Later, she dies in her sleep at age 80, and there’s scores of family at the funeral. Hordes of them. Much, much later, Steve looks her up, and gives into the sin of envy.)

 

* * *

 

But in 1934, Steve is sixteen, so he bounces back. He goes on a couple more disastrous double dates with Bucky, but none of the other gals seem interested in being listened to the way that Ruth had. One of the dates does end in some very awkward fooling around that leaves Steve hot, bothered, and vaguely guilty feeling. He can’t even look at Bucky the morning after that, even though it hadn’t gone farther than necking with all their clothes on.

It’s a hot, sticky summer, and Steve’s walking home later than he should because he’d picked up a late shift at the grocery store where he’s been working afternoons. The guy who was supposed to take the late shift got sick, and Steve volunteered to stay, in exchange for extra pay and dinner.

So now he’s walking home way too late in the evening, but it’s worth it. He has a bit more cash in his pocket, and a full meal in his stomach, for once. His mom got the evening shift; she won't even know he was out. The streets are more shadowy than he usually sees them, and almost quiet. Steve kinda likes it, actually. There’s muffled jazz coming from one of the seedier clubs, and Steve turns his head to look, automatically, as he passes, even though the door is shut and the curtains on the place are pulled tight.

Then, he sees them. It’s just a glimpse, in the alley between the club and the building next to it. His steps falter slightly, his worn shoes making no sound on the pavement. The light back there is dim, but Steve knows what he’s seeing. It burns into his brain.

There’s pale fingers digging into dark hair. Another pair of hands -- big and tanned, a builder's hands -- grabbing at the back of a jacket, pulling, desperate. Two bodies pressing close, closer, like they’re trying to crawl inside. Broad hands. Broad shoulders. Short hair.

It's two men. They’re kissing each other like it’s the end of the world.

One pulls back, and frames the other guy’s face in his hands, just for a second, a tender moment where the two of them just breathe at each other. And it's not like -- they're not  _fairies_ or anything. They’re just two guys. They might work at the docks, or they might work at a diner. They could be anyone. They look normal.

They kiss again, slower this time. Sweeter.

Steve looks away, face burning, and walks faster before they can see him.

It’s not like Steve doesn’t know about that stuff. He lives in Brooklyn, after all. One of their neighbors -- a quiet fella who makes no trouble and dresses like an accountant -- is probably queer, if the rumors are to be believed. All his Ma ever said about it was that it “wasn’t nice to talk about people behind their backs,” and Steve knew she was right, so he hadn’t brought it up again.

He knows about it academically, from church, and he knows about it colloquially, from word-of-mouth. Usually the unpleasant kind of words from the mouths of bullies. He’s been called a queer himself often enough, the words thrown at him like rocks.

But he’s never… he’s never _seen_ it before.

His face is hot, and he shoves his hands in his pockets, and he doesn’t look left or right all the rest of the way home. It’s one thing to hear about it, secondhand or thirdhand, in whispered insults and passing slander. It’s something else to _see._  His mind is spinning fast, and… and…

The thing is that virtually no one Steve’s age really wants to be close to him. There was Ruth, very briefly, sure. But on the rare occasion when someone touches him, it’s with a fist. Most of the time, it’s a battle just for Steve to be _seen._

Except with Bucky.

Bucky _sees_ Steve. And more than that, Bucky _seeks him out. He_  actively prefers Steve’s company over other people. With Bucky, there’s a friendly arm slung around his shoulder, a punch on the bicep, a nudge of his knee against Steve’s.

Steve’s stomach is a sick twist of confusion, of fear and longing. All he can think is that he _wants._ He didn’t know that he could _want_ like that, didn’t know in was even an option, really.

God help him, he can barely get the door closed behind him, can barely get himself into bed before he’s picturing what it would be like if Buck touched him like that. Fists on his jacket, pulling him close, burying his fingers in Buck’s hair, pulling closer. It definitely doesn’t help that in the last couple years, Buck’s gone from a dopey looking kid with more mouth than sense to a smirky, smooth talking movie star with his hair slicked back and a swagger in his step and God, his shoulders are like--

Steve has to think about his breathing, has to carefully coach himself through what might be the beginning of an asthma attack, or might just be wild panic. Because he _wants,_ and he wants _Bucky._

He knows that’s supposed to be wrong, but there’s nothing inside telling him that he shouldn’t. And that’s never happened before. He’s always known right from wrong, instinctively. He’s always been able to rely on that compass, that feeling inside that tells him what’s true.

But this… He can’t feel the wrongness of it, except maybe that it’s kinda rude to think of Bucky that way, because Bucky’s his friend, not a piece of meat. It feels a little sneaky, a little wicked, maybe, but it doesn’t disgust him the way he thinks it probably should.

It’s the first time that Steve really realizes that he might be a bad person. Not just that he’s a normal, flawed person trying real hard to be good, but that there might be something wrong with him underneath all the rest of it. That maybe he’s twisted up on the inside, where it really counts, not just his body. That maybe his soul is sick too.

Steve lies very still in his bed that night, and he doesn’t sleep a wink.

 

He’s not sure how to confess it, because it’s not that he’s done anything, really. Not technically. When Father O’Neill sees it’s him in the confessional, and Steve doesn’t immediately start talking, the poor man just sighs heavily and says: “Fighting again?”

Steve ducks his head and almost smiles. He likes Father O’Neill, who is gruff and no-nonsense and a little bit loose about the rules. He’s broken up fights with those big ham-hands of his, the same hands he uses to dab holy water and light candles.

“Not this time, Father.”

“I don’t know whether to be relieved or afraid,” Father O’Neill says, “but let’s get on with it, shall we?”

The words come familiar to his lips. _Bless me father, for I have sinned._ He calculates the days since his last confession, and recites that too, and then… then he runs out of words again. The silence stretches out, and his mouth opens and closes. Father O’Neill is patient, and quiet, and for all his gruffness, he’s understanding, above all else. He knows when to wait. It’s important that Steve says it first. It’s not supposed to be easy -- it wouldn’t be much of an act of contrition if it were easy.

“I’ve been having… thoughts. Bad thoughts.”  His face is burning. He can’t say anymore. He doesn’t want to implicate Bucky, doesn’t want to admit it to himself.

“Son,” Father O’Neill says, sounding tired, and understanding. But then -- Steve isn’t the only sixteen-year-old in the parish. Hell, Bucky’s in this parish, and Steve’s seen Bucky doing his hail-mary's and our-fathers, like every other teenage boy there. “Have you acted on these thoughts? In any way?”

“No, Father, of course not,” Steve says, scandalized.

“Lying is a sin, my son.”

“I’m not lying, Father!”

“Alright,” Father O’Neill says, in a tone that suggests that maybe he doesn’t completely believe Steve. “Tell me about these thoughts. They’re lustful, I take it?”

“Yes, Father,” Steve says. He squeezes his eyes shut, he has to get it out himself, can’t let Father O’Neill go on thinking that he’s just another teenager thinking lustfully, when...

“Well, I can’t say that it’s--”

“They’re about men, Father.”

There’s a beat of silence, and it feels like years. When Father O’Neill speaks again, his voice is soft. Kinder even than when Steve confessed about beating a boy’s face in after he caught the bastard throwing rocks at a stray pup. “Are you sorry about them? The bad thoughts?”

“Yes,” Steve says, and his voice catches, because he is sorry, deeply sorry, but more than that, he’s terrified. Because it wasn’t easy, feeling sorry, it was something he had to work at, and--

“Will you ever act on them?”

“No! I would never, I--”

“And will you try not to do it again?”

“Of _course!”_

“Then son, that’s all I need to know.”

Steve could cry with relief when he’s assigned his penance and receives absolution. He doesn’t have to know right from wrong, all the time. He can ask, and someone else will tell him what’s right, and what’s wrong, and grant him absolution.

 

(A few years later, when he confesses lustful thoughts about Virginia Miller, Father O’Neill assigns the exact same penance. That’s a strange kind of relief, too.)

 

(Many, many, many years after that, he wakes up and realizes maybe he knew right from wrong all along. It’s a sort of relief, but it’s a weight on his shoulders too. It’s one last piece of childhood being taken away from him.)

 

* * *

 

Wanting Bucky isn’t something that goes away, but it doesn’t get worse, either. As he gets older, he learns to value what he has over what he doesn’t have. Yeah, he doesn’t get to kiss Buck, but that’s okay, because he gets to lean on Buck when his head is spinning from not-enough-air. He doesn’t get to dance cheek-to-cheek with Buck, but that would be weird anyway. Who would lead? Would Bucky’s toes come out intact? And he does get to sit by the East River and draw the Brooklyn Bridge for Buck, who’s fascinated by the cables and steel and how it all fits together.

He can’t even be jealous of the girls Bucky goes with, because Bucky always comes back to Steve. The girls can have all the dancing, all the movie-star smiles, they can make time all they like, Steve doesn’t mind. Because they don’t get this: they don’t get Bucky snort-laughing at some smartass remark Steve made, or Bucky bleary-eyed and mussy-haired before his morning coffee, or Bucky mending socks with swift, confident movements, brow furrowed in concentration. They don’t get Bucky losing his goddamn mind over a sci fi pulp or gushing about the latest inventions. They get a polished up, smirking, ladies man, but they don’t get _Bucky Barnes._

And it’s not like he starts wanting every handsome swell who passes by, it’s just Bucky.

Steve thinks it’s probably just normal. Maybe not _normal_ normal, but ordinary. The ordinary kind of sin that happens to him because he’s sick. He gets envy a lot, because he’s envious for things that other people take for granted, like breathing. And probably, he wants Bucky like that because Bucky’s the only person aside from his Ma who actually touches him voluntarily. It’s pathetic, but it’s only to be expected. He’s just a normal guy who’s life is a little sad. It doesn’t make him queer.

(Does it?)

That doesn’t stop Steve wanting more, but it eases some of the pain, the way a cool hand on his forehead doesn’t make a fever go away, but it does ease some of the discomfort. The pain becomes a part of him, like all his other aches. He carries it around under his heart, like angina of the spirit. It’s a familiar sort of ache, that longing.

It reminds him that he’s alive. Steve isn’t trying to sell anything to anyone, least of all himself; he knows that life is pain.

 

* * *

 

Sarah Rogers goes to the hospital again in September. They’re pretty sure it’s TB for real this time. He wants to drop out of high school, so he can start working full time, maybe earn some cash to help pay for whatever she needs to get better. He's heard that there are clinics in Arizona, practically resorts. The dry air is supposed to be good for your lungs. But his ma flatly forbids it -- she wants to stay in New York, and she wants him to stay in school.

Bucky invites Steve to come to the Barnes house. They’re having a big dinner, because the next day is Yom Kippur. Ma Barnes doesn't want him to be alone in that damn drafty tenement, she wants him to stay with them until Sarah's out of the hospital. Bucky explains that Steve doesn’t have to fast if he doesn’t want to. Mrs. Barnes is the only one who really _has_ to fast, and even if Steve _was_ Jewish, he might not have to fast, on account of his being so sickly. But then Bucky also explains about the Days of Awe and the Book of Life, and the Day of Atonement, and Steve decides to join in.

Turns out George always joins in the fasting too, out of solidarity, even though he hasn't missed a single Mass since 1918. While the others go to the synagogue -- including Bucky, who ain't an altar boy no more -- Steve and Mr. Barnes stay at the house and listen to the radio. Steve does a self-portrait to send to his ma, and a sketch of her for himself, while the memory is still fresh. 

They still don't know for sure what's got her coughing up a lung this time. But Steve knows, with a kind of horrible certainty, that even if it isn’t TB _this time,_ it _will be,_ eventually. _I’ve got no quit in me either,_ she said to him, once she'd gotten settled in the narrow hospital bed.

But Steve knows she’s lying.

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Confession time for me: I come from a long line of atheists, so if any of the religious stuff is off-base, it’s because I’m a non-native speaker, so to speak. I’m not a complete asshole; I did research on Catholicism and Judaism for this, but that only goes so far, I know. So if I’ve gotten anything here egregiously wrong, feel free to let me know and I’ll try to fix it.
> 
> Actually, y’know what, that goes for anything, all the time. If I fuck up, let me know. If I need to tag something, let me know.
> 
> As for Steve and Bucky and 1930s era queerness, it’s actually super interesting to read up on, but there’s too much to sum up here. If I had to boil down my thoughts on Steve and Bucky and sexuality -- I feel like they’d both strongly identify with this W. Somerset Maugham quote: “I tried to persuade myself that I was three-quarters normal and that only a quarter of me was queer--whereas really it was the other way around.”


	4. Azure Interlude

## 4

 _Here in my seclusion,_  
_You’re a blue illusion_  
_While I’m in this **azure interlude**_

_-[Azure](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMJUO-ITj6U) by Duke Ellington and Irving Mills, 1937._

 

Nothing, nothing has ever, in his life, hurt as much as his mother’s death.

It’s all-encompassing. Bone deep. For days after, it’s all he can feel. He doesn’t even notice his asthma until he’s knee-deep in an attack, because the pain doesn’t register until he’s choking. He can’t tell if his dumb heart is giving out at last or not, because he can’t really feel it. The grief is like static on the radio, blocking out every other station with a white-noise screech.

He can barely hear what Father O’Neill says during the funeral. He goes through the motions of it, feeling like he’s underwater, like he’s lost in fog. He’s not even wearing proper black, because he doesn’t have any. It’s just his ordinary Sunday best. The Barneses all wear black -- even Winnie comes to the church and sings along with the hymns. They stand with him like family. Bucky looks real smart in a three-piece suit that must be secondhand, but looks nearly new. His hair’s all slicked back, and his eyes are sad. He keeps trying to get Steve alone, keeps looking at Steve like he’s worried. It’s because he cares, Steve knows. He knows it distantly, the same way he knows that he would normally feel a pang of longing if Buck looked at him like that.

But right now, Steve can’t even feel anything -- he can’t even find the ache of wanting Bucky in all the mess of agony in his head, his heart, his whole damn body.

He slips away, after, alone. He can already see Buck’s eyes seeking him out, and he can feel that Mrs. Barnes wants to take him home and mother him in her gruff, strange way. He can’t stand the thought of anyone mothering him right now.

He walks to the cemetery alone. The new stone looks strange next to the old one. He needs to get used to the sight of them together, he supposes. Sarah and Joseph Rogers. Together again, after eighteen years apart.

He walks home, hands shoved deep in his pockets.

The worst thing about it is that it’s never going to stop hurting, not for the rest of his life. Although, he supposes that probably won't be very long. He wasn’t even supposed to live this long, after all.

But here he fucking is. It’s awful to be angry about it, to be hurt. But he’d spent so long resigned to the fact that he was going to break his mom's heart by dying on her, that he’d never really thought about how much it would hurt to outlive her.

He’s an orphan now, he supposes. He’s on his own, whether he wants to be or not. Still, at least he’s not a burden anymore. Not that his mom would like him thinking like that, but he’s never been able to stop it. She’s not saddled with looking after him anymore. No one is. No one has to be.

He blinks back the hard tears trying to push their way out of him. If he’s on his own now, that’s fine. He can get more shifts at the grocery store, maybe start building a portfolio doing signs around town, work his way into advertising sketches for magazines and heck, if nothing else there's always pinups for perverts. He can pay his rent and put food on the table. And somehow -- he'll never know how -- his mom managed to leave him a bit of money, enough to get him through art school, he thinks. As long as he doesn’t get any sicker than he already is.

He doesn’t need anyone else. He can be okay on his own.

He stares at the pavement in front of him as he walks. He doesn’t look up until he’s back at his mom's place, and…

There’s Buck. He’s leaning against the beat up brick wall, smoking. He’s still wearing his suit from the funeral, his hair all slicked back. He looks sharp, and Steve still can’t feel anything about that. For all that he’s felt sick about how he wants Buck, it’s somehow worse to look at him and feel nothing at all. Steve can’t bring himself to look at Buck’s face, because he doesn’t want to see the pity there. Bucky sighs, drops his cigarette, and stomps it out before following Steve up to the apartment.

They talk, but for the life of him, Steve can barely pay attention to what Buck’s saying. Something about they wanted to give him a ride to the cemetery. Steve says he wanted to be alone. Bucky asks how it was, and Steve says something about the plot, about her being next to his dad. He doesn’t say anything about how he kind of wishes he was with them.

Steve pushes his hair out of his face. Bucky’s going to ask him over, Steve can feel it. Buck’s got his own place now (it was supposed to be _theirs,_  before Steve’s mom got sick) and Steve can tell that Bucky’s worrying about him, that Bucky wants to keep an eye on him, so he knows exactly what Buck’s going to suggest when he says: “I was gonna ask--”

“I know what you’re gonna say, Buck, I just…” He can’t right now. He’s not good company. He’s just going to be a burden to hang out with. He’s a mess inside, all the pain and the grief… He can’t even find his damn key, he’s so lost in his own head. He checks his pockets, his coat, tries to think where he could have dropped it, but--

“We can put the couch cushions on the floor like when we were kids.” Steve thinks of it: Bucky sleeping on the floor, Steve looking down at him, his Ma coming in quietly after her night shift and trying not to wake them. “It’ll be fun! All you gotta do is shine my shoes, maybe take out the trash.” Because Buck knows Steve won’t take charity, he has to pay his own way, even if it’s just a token gesture. Bucky is kicking the broken brick off his spare key, and the next thing Steve knows, Bucky’s holding it out to him. “Come on,” Bucky says, cajoling, but now with a healthy undercurrent of _ya dumb stubborn bastard._

Bucky doesn’t want him to be alone right now. He wants to get Steve out of the empty apartment that he’d shared with his mother. It’s kindness. Steve still can’t feel anything about that. There’s just static in his head, in his heart. A radio stuck between stations.

Steve looks down at the key in his hands and takes a breath. “Thank you, Buck,” Steve says, and makes himself meet Bucky’s eyes for the first time. “But I can get by on my own.” It feels like the first real thing he’s said all day. He _can._ He can get by on his own.

“Thing is…” And Bucky pauses, cocks his head, half shakes it. “You don’t have to.”  He meets Steve’s gaze, his eyes sad -- not pitying, like Steve had feared, but kicked-puppy sad, like Steve is physically hurting him by being this dumb. And then he puts a hand on Steve’s shoulder, and squeezes, and it’s the first thing that Steve’s really felt since he let go of his ma’s cold hand. Bucky holds Steve’s gaze. “I’m with ya till the end of the line, pal.”

The old aches come back, then. His spine hurts from too much standing and walking. His heart hurts in the old familiar way. His lungs are tired from coughing in the cold autumnal air.

But before all that, the very first thing that comes back is that warm ache of longing behind his sternum, squeezing just as tight as Bucky’s hand on his shoulder. It’s like an old friend. All his aches and pains are old friends by now. But this is one he’s been actively missing. He welcomes it in, and feels himself sigh, and smile. He looks back up at Bucky’s face; that movie star jawline, those worried, caring eyes.

This particular ache means he’s not alone.

 

* * *

 

It’s 1936. Steve’s eighteen and an orphan. In October, he drops out of school.

(Later, they don't put _that_ in the history books. But then, much, _much_  later, it becomes a motivational talking point: you know who else dropped out of high school? Steve Rogers and Albert Einstein. They talk about him like some kind of Can-Do Proto-Captain America, roughing it out through personal tragedy. Steve doesn’t know how to tell people that it wasn’t like that at all. He was just another dumb teenager with shitty decision making skills. It was practically his mother’s deathbed wish for him to finish school, and he just threw it away. He was too stupid with grief and pride, too full of rage, bubbling over with nowhere to go. Maybe it’s better if he paves over that piece of himself and lets people believe whatever they want to believe.)

Steve moves out of his mom's old place into a crappy, unheated room in someone’s house. He can’t afford a proper apartment, and most people who have an extra room won’t rent to him, because he’s always coughing, and what if it’s catching? He's lucky to be able to find a place at all, but what he does find is  _terrible._  Bucky refuses to help him move in, because "in a lifetime of bad ideas, pal, this is the worst one yet." The room is practically a dungeon: cold, and damp, and dark, with mold on the walls, but it's his. He pays in cash by the month. But he pays every day with a cough that gets deeper and harsher the colder it gets. He pays for that room with breath that rattles and a chill that gets into his bones and starts burning.

 

* * *

 

November is hard.

The morning after Halloween, Steve is running late for work. He's just coming back from the shared bathroom, trying not to wake anyone else in the house. He looks up and jumps when he sees a figure standing there, leaning against the window.

It's Bucky, but he's... It takes Steve a minute to make sense of what he’s seeing. Bucky’s swaying, suit askew and lipstick on his collar and clearly still drunk from the night before. He doesn't have an overcoat. He must be freezing. Steve throws open the window. "Bucky," he hisses, "what the hell--"

"Don't what the hell me -- what the hell  _you_ ," Bucky says, belligerent and making not much sense at all.

"Bucky--"

"I've got  _a place_ and you choose to  _live here,"_ Bucky waves a hand angrily at the room behind Steve. Steve's painfully aware of his rickety little bed, the thin carpet, the mildew smell. He doesn't even have room to leave his easel set up. 

"Come on, man, we talked about this," Steve says. He grabs his coat -- he needs to get to work, he can't do this now. "It's too much, I can't afford--"

"No." Bucky looks livid. " _I_ talked about this, and  _you_ refused to fucking  _listen._ I pay for two rooms, you pay for one, but noooo, you're too fucking proud to--"

"Bucky--" Steve starts. "I told you, I don't want to be a--"

Bucky leans through the window, one hand on the sill, weaving a little. Steve can smell the whiskey on his breath. And then Bucky shoves him, not playfully, but _hard_ , a palm to the middle of Steve's chest that knocks him back on his ass _,_  right in the middle of his thin, raggedy carpet.

He stares up at Bucky, astonished. He and Bucky roughhouse, sure, but the last time Bucky hurt him, he was thirteen and it was an accident. Bucky had cried about it. He's not crying now: he's framed in morning light, disheveled and enraged and still so fucking beautiful. "You're  _lying_ ," Bucky says, voice thick. "You're  _lying to me_. You  _say_ you want to prove you can make it on your own, but that's not-- that's not all of it, Steve. I can tell when you're lying." His face twists then, hurt and angry and raw. "You don' wanna live with a Jew? S'that it?"

"What?" Steve says, baffled. That's completely nonsensical. Steve and Bucky go to the same church, for cryin' out loud, and Steve's never cared once that Bucky sometimes goes to Temple too. "No, Bucky, that's not it at all--" he can't believe he even has to say it.

"Then what is it?" Bucky says. No -- he _begs,_ and Steve gets it. Because outside of Steve's head, of course it looks like Steve's deliberately avoiding Bucky. There's no good reason for him not to live with Bucky, not if you don't know that Steve--

Steve snaps his mouth shut. He's a shit liar at the best of times, and he certainly can't lie to Bucky. He's dodged around this with half-truths for years, but here it is, sitting between them. The elephant in the room. What is he supposed to say?  _I can't live with you because I love you?_ That just sounds cheap and dramatic and sordid.  _I can't live with you because I'm scared_ is closer to the truth, but Bucky would press for more. And what if Bucky did know? What then? Would Steve lose his only friend? He doesn't  _think_ so, but...

Steve keeps his mouth clamped tight shut, jaw clenching. 

"I don't even know why I ask," Bucky says abruptly, pushing back from the window. "You'd rather live in this shithole, fine. Like anyone's ever been able to stop you doing exactly what you fucking want." He stumbles back from the window, and a minute later, Steve hears him rattling down the fire escape stairs, his shoes scuffing down to the end of the alley. 

Steve closes his eyes and tries not to cry.

 

He and Bucky don't speak for two whole weeks, which is the longest silence that Steve can ever remember since the day they met in 1930. 

During the days, he knows it won't last. He knows that he and Bucky are stronger than this, knows that they both just need a little time to cool down. During the nights, though, Steve can't help lying awake, completely petrified. If he loses Bucky... then he’ll really have _nothing._ It’s almost enough to have Steve running across town to beg Bucky’s forgiveness. But every morning, he’s back to the certainty that it won’t last, that they just need time...

 

It ends when Bucky comes over with an awkward apology and an invitation to Thanksgiving. Steve accepts. Neither of them talk about the fight. Neither of them push. 

When Steve turns up at the Barnes house for Thanksgiving dinner, it's Bucky who comes thundering down the steps and answers the door, breathless and grinning, practically glowing at the sight of Steve.

They'll be okay, Steve thinks. They're going to be fine.

 

* * *

 

December is both better and worse than November. The Barneses make him stay for Hanukkah _and_ Christmas. He thaws out some and only cries a little because he misses his mom so damn much. The Barneses almost don’t let him leave. He has to practically sneak out the back door after the New Year’s party. He doesn’t want to be a burden.

 

* * *

 

January is… a blur. There are no shifts for him at the grocery store, but he takes on some drawing work. He’s not a professional, not by a long shot, but he’s got a name around the neighborhood because he does the window art for the grocery store. So he does some ads, trudges out into the snow to pick up assignments and carry his portfolio around. He makes all his deadlines, even though his head aches and his lungs burn. But then he goes back to that sorry-ass room and lies down and…

He can’t get up.

It’s Sunday, and he tries, gets halfway to the door before his knees give out and he has to crawl back to bed. Father O’Neill will forgive him. He takes off his Sunday best with shaking hands, because he’s going to sweat through them if he doesn’t, and he can’t afford to mess up his least grubby clothes. He gets back under the covers and pulls them up to his chin and shivers and sweats and…

 

There’s a cool hand on his forehead. A voice. Calling him. Saying: “Steve. Steve. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph -- Ma!”

Mom? Steve tries to open his eyes. They burn. He can’t focus. He breathes in. It rattles. He sees -- a strong jawline, turned away from him. Voices. Muffled, muddled. Something about water. About burning up. He imagines a fire, consuming everything. Where’s his mom?

Bucky. That’s Bucky’s hand on his forehead. Bucky’s jawline. He knows it. He’s drawn it enough. He used Bucky’s jawline in that ad for shaving cream. “Buck,” he croaks. The word hurts on the way out, but it makes Bucky look down at him. Bucky looks scared. “Where--” he wants to ask where his mom is. She’s always here when he’s sick. She knows what to do. He tries to move, but he’s weighed down by blankets.

“Don’t -- Jesus, Stevie, don’t move. You stubborn fucking idiot, stay fucking still.”

“Buck--” _you shouldn’t swear, Buck, it’s Sunday. Did you pray for me, at Church? I woulda told you I couldn’t make it, but I was so tired. I’m sorry if I worried you._ He wants to say it, but the cough seizes him like a dog with a rat and it won’t let go. It shakes him, and tears him up, and doesn’t stop to let him catch his breath.

It’s Bucky’s hands that prop him up, not his mom's. It’s Bucky’s hands that rub his back the way she used to, Bucky’s voice that coaches him through it. _Come on, buddy, breathe with me now, come on, pal, you can do it._

His mom is dead, he remembers. It hits him again, fresh and raw, right in the center of his aching chest. It steals his breath.

He rests his forehead against Buck’s shoulder and tries to breathe. Tears and sweat drip down his face. He shakes, and shakes, and shakes.

 

It goes on like that for days. Bucky stays with him. He sleeps on the floor by Steve's bed, on folded up blankets because Steve doesn't even have a couch in here. Bucky still goes to work, but he comes straight back after, and he always looks a little wild around the eyes, like he’s worried Steve will have died on him while he was down at the garage.

Steve doesn’t die on him. Mostly, he sleeps. He tries to do some sketches, but his hands aren’t strong or steady enough. So there’s no point trying to even get out of bed, since if he can’t draw, he can’t work, and there’s certainly no point going around with his portfolio. It’s a relief. He’s so tired all the time he can barely keep his eyes open.

 

That stubborn pigheaded pride of his comes back before his strength does.

“I swear to fucking Christ, Steve, if you try to kick me outta here one more time, I will break your fucking jaw!” Bucky snaps, one evening while he’s serving up matzah ball soup from Mrs. Barnes.

“I don’t need you mothering me, Buck,” Steve says, glaring. He’s getting better. He’s even dressed today, got up and walked around the room a couple times. He’s wearing shoes and everything. He even thought about trying to go outside, but decided against it when Bucky glared at him. “I can manage.”

Bucky drops the ladle, splashing a bit of soup out of the pot and onto Steve’s rickety little kitchen table. He whirls to face Steve, hands clenched into fists. He stomps across the room and for a second, Steve thinks he’s about to get hit. But Bucky just leans in, close, expression taut with rage. “Manage to kill yourself, maybe!” he shouts, right in Steve’s face. “Is that what you want, pal? Is that what you’re looking for? An easy way out? Well tough fucking luck, buddy, I’m not here to make that easy for ya!”

Steve draws back, feeling like he’s been punched right in the gut, all the air gone. “Bucky, I--”

“You don’t get to do that, Steve, you don’t get to just give up on me,” Bucky says, and he’s shaking, still talking way too loud. “You don’t get to decide when the end of the line is, okay? You don’t-- You don’t-- fuck.”

Suddenly, Bucky crumples in on himself like something inside him has snapped and his whole internal framework is collapsing. He sits down hard on the bed next to Steve, and drops his head into his hands, elbows propped on his knees. His fingers curl tight in his hair. His breath stutters wetly.

Steve doesn’t know what to do. He’s seen Bucky angry before. He’s seen Bucky hurt. He’s even seen Bucky cry. (Bucky cries a lot more than people think, in the pictures, and at books, but only when he thinks other people can’t see it.) But Steve’s never seen Bucky like this: tears in his eyes, and shaky all over, and shouting because he’s so scared and so worried and so hurt. And that’s on Steve.

He remembers, suddenly, years ago, looking up at Bucky back when he was an altar boy, and seeing that expression like Bucky was going to start a fight with God. He thinks about how he’s still alive, despite the odds, and he thinks about Bucky coming over to look after Steve while his mom was at work. He thinks about Bucky picking up his prescriptions from the pharmacy. He thinks about endless fights, and Bucky always at his side, always having his back. 

He thinks about Jacob wrestling with God, and wonders if he’s only alive today because Bucky’s been fighting all this time.

And suddenly, Steve _gets it._  The guilt hits him in a wave, thick and choking in his throat. How could he be so blind? All this time, he’s been thinking of himself as a burden, and Bucky’s been trying and trying and _trying_  to treat him like a friend. Steve feels like the worst kind of ungrateful, the absolute worst kind of asshole, he’s so stupid, and so _selfish._

“Bucky, I’m sorry,” Steve says. “Shit, I’m so sorry, I didn’t--”

“God, shut up.” And then Bucky turns so fast that Steve jumps, and he’s hugging Steve so tight it hurts his tired, achy ribs. Steve lets out a breath that only rattles a little and puts his skinny arms around Bucky’s broad back. Bucky is bigger than Steve will ever be, but his skin is cool, compared to Steve, who’s still a bit feverish. Bucky’s hands and feet are always cold anyway. He huffs, and tucks his nose into Steve’s shoulder and Steve makes a grumbly complaining sound and pulls away a bit, instinctively.

“Geeze, Buck, your nose is like an icicle.”

“Yeah, well your apartment is fucking freezing,” Bucky snaps back. He pulls out of the hug, and puts his hands on Steve’s shoulders. “This place is killing you, pal.”

Steve rolls his eyes and looks away. “Bucky--”

Bucky shakes him, fingers tight enough to leave bruises. _“Steve.”_

Steve looks up, reluctantly. Bucky’s eyes are wide, and scared, and red-rimmed. Steve melts a little.

“Please. There’s a place on the other side of Brooklyn Heights, near Red Hook, two rooms, and _heating,_ Stevie. We split the rent, we can afford it. I’m begging you, pal.” He really is. His bottom lip is trembling.

And honestly. Steve’s only human. He’s not made of stone. He can take a lot of hurting, he’s used to it. But he never wants to see Bucky hurting like this. Never.

“Alright,” Steve says. “Alright. Fine. I give up. You win.”

Bucky lets out a shaky breath and all the starch goes out of him. He puts his forehead against Steve’s chest, fingers easing their death grip on Steve’s shoulders.

“Jesus, pal,” Bucky mumbles, then pushes back. He lets go of Steve, straightens Steve’s shirt, and then punches his shoulder. “Scare me like that again and I’ll kill you myself, okay? Now eat your fucking soup, ya punk.”

“Jerk,” Steve grumbles. But he does eat the fucking soup.

 

* * *

 

Steve knows it’s a bad idea, but he does it anyway.

The apartment is an old tenement building that has managed to escape the big buy up that the NYC Housing Authority is doing. The heat bangs and rattles in the pipes, Bucky’s foot goes right through the fifth step in the staircase, and when the wind blows from just the wrong direction, the whole street smells like Red Hook. But as far as Bucky and Steve are concerned, it's the best little rat trap in Brooklyn.

The rooms remind Steve of the place he and his mom lived in before they moved to Vinegar Hill. They've got one tiny bedroom at the back, a kitchen with a bathtub in it, and a living area not much bigger than the bedroom. They eventually decide to put one bed in the bedroom and the other out in the living room, because they don’t have a couch. Also, the heating in the bedroom is busted, so Steve’s bed is the one that ends up in the living room, close to the banging radiator. They put Steve’s secondhand easel in one corner of the living room, where the light from the window will hit it, and Bucky brings up a three-legged armchair from the street. He props up the legless corner and stacks his books around it, all within easy reach, like the shabby chair is his throne, and the extensive collection of sci fi pulps, detective novels, and comic books is his treasure horde. They put a board over the bathtub and voila! A dining table. Rebecca makes curtains for their tiny window, complaining loudly that her efforts are completely wasted here, like lipstick on a pig, because her brother and his best friend are incurable slobs who will cheerfully live in squalor forever.

Steve doesn’t disagree with that, and neither does Bucky.

They move into the apartment over by Red Hook in February, 1937. Steve's still a little woozy on his feet, so if his hands shake a bit, no one says anything of it. He's never been so nervous to do something, and so desperate to hide how nervous he was. He's so wrapped up in his own head that he doesn't notice the exact date.

 

(Later, Steve tries to remember. Was it the end of February? Was it right at the start? Was it before or after Valentine’s Day? He can’t remember, but it kills him that he can’t, because it’s February _now,_ in 1945 and he's-- and Bucky is--)

 

* * *

  

Later, Steve wonders why the hell he worried so much. It's terrible, living with Bucky. It's _awful,_ just not in the way Steve thought it would be. Bucky drives Steve _crazy._ Bucky’s been driving Steve crazy for a while now, of course, but this is different. They’ve been more or less attached at the hip since they were twelve; he never anticipated that living in the same apartment would be any different.

It is. And not for the reasons Steve might have thought.

It turns out that Bucky sings non-stop -- sometimes just little snatches of music, sometimes the same three lines over and over and over with variations. Sometimes it’s just made up melodies and goddamn nonsense words. When they were hanging out during the day, or occasionally sleeping over at each other’s houses on weekends, it was just a funny quirk, but 24/7 it’s like Chinese water torture. In '38, it's _Autumn in New York_ for four straight weeks, but for most of ‘37 it’s _They Can’t Take That Away From Me._  Steve contemplates both homicide and suicide before the year is done.

Also: Bucky snores. Which again, one or two nights in a week, is just kind of silly, but when Steve hasn’t slept well for three nights because his asthma’s acting up, and on the fourth night he can’t sleep because literally the entire apartment is shaking with Bucky’s snores, well. Sometimes it’s all Steve can do not to smother the bastard with his own pillow.

Bucky doesn’t work at the docks anymore, but he still swears like someone who does -- or like someone who grew up within shouting distance of Mrs. Barnes. Steve didn’t realize it, but it turns out that for the last six years, Bucky’s been toning it down around Steve. Amazingly. And then, about two months in, Bucky’s coming home late from a night out at a jazz club when he stubs his toe on one of his own books and says “fuck” six times in one sentence without drawing breath. Fuck, Steve learns, is a word with breathtaking versatility. It is a noun: “you fuck.” It is a verb: “fuck you.” It is an adjective: “you fucking fuck.” It can be parts of compound words: “motherfucker.”

Steve is learning all kinds of things. Lucky Steve.

And hey, to be fair, it’s not like Steve is a joy to live with. Sickliness aside (and what a hell of a thing to put aside) he’s stubborn, and self-righteous, and he’s got a hell of a temper. He starts fights at the drop of a hat with whoever’s closest, even if “whoever’s closest” is his best friend.

Bucky says “Goddammit, Steve, I ain't gonna fight you!” so often that he threatens to get it tattooed on his forehead. In apology, Steve draws a comic of a little monkey (Steve is always a tiny little monkey, in his own comics) trying to pick a fight with an exasperated bear (Bucky is always a bear in Steve's comics; sometimes a grizzly, but usually just an oversized cartoonish teddy bear). Bucky tacks it to the wall and jokes about getting it framed. After that, whenever Steve starts trying to pick a fight for no good fucking reason, Bucky just points at the picture. It isn’t always enough to stop the fight, but it helps them laugh about it, after.

They can always laugh about it, after. That’s what makes this work. Steve’s never been easy in his own skin, never been easy in himself. But being around Bucky? That’s easy. Fighting with Bucky is easy, and apologizing afterwards is easy. Steve doesn’t have to explain that he only snapped because he’s hurting, because he’s always hurting. Bucky knows.

Even being sick is a little easier, because Bucky knows what to do, and knows that Steve won’t ask for help. This has the unexpected side effect of Steve getting sick less often, and not staying sick nearly so long. In fact, Steve stays healthy long enough that he can put some money into savings, and, eventually, into art classes. Steve grew up poor; he knows how to scrimp and save, knows how to stretch his salary and pick up extra shifts at odd times, so in the fall he can enroll at Auburndale.

Bucky’s scrimping too -- there wasn't as much money saved up as he was hoping. The Barneses always seem to have just-enough-money, and not-quite-enough-money all at the same time.

It's not their fault really; they weren't expecting Becca to fall in love with Scott Proctor. He's a good man, but he's from a family even worse off than Steve's. George and Winnie worked hard to convince him to take some money. They don't want Becca and Scott to have to wait, not when there's a war coming. So the newlyweds get most of what was supposed to be Bucky's tuition, and then George and Winnie sell the car so Bucky can go to school still. Not like they _needed_ a car, living in the city like they do. But still…

It reminds them all painfully of 1929; this sense that each paycheck has to do impossible things, the stress of it. 

 

But nonetheless, by the end of '37 Steve and Bucky are students again -- not at the same school, or in the same classes, but it still feels weirdly like being kids at a neverending sleepover, with no parents to stop them from doing every dumbass thing that comes into their heads.

It's terrible. It's awful. It’s _heaven._ If heaven were populated entirely by two demons who can’t cook worth a darn, who like nothing better than pranking each other and drinking too much. Nonetheless, later, when Steve thinks of home, of heaven, he thinks of that shitty awful flat, and Bucky. 

Steve and Bucky are so wrapped up in each other, so preoccupied with having enough money not just for rent and food but also for school and school supplies, so wrapped up in their studies and the constant hammer-pounding stress of being nearly-broke and (in Steve’s case) nearly-always-in-pain that they almost miss Hitler’s rise to power.

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song for this chapter is one of my favorites.
> 
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> [Concept art for Steve's apartment plus Truly Excellent Meta](https://historicallyaccuratesteve.tumblr.com/post/109231371791/i-should-be-working-but-instead-i-am-thinking)
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> Actually, that whole blog is one of my guiltiest pleasures. Fanfiction meta is like crack to me.


	5. As the Shadows Fell

## 5

 _I'll never forget the people I met_  
_Braving those angry skies_  
_I remember well **as the shadows fell**_  
_The light of hope in their eyes_

_-[The White Cliffs of Dover](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAaxkAgVkHQ) by Walter Kent and Nat Burton, 1941._

 

It’s not like Steve or Bucky forgot that Europe _existed_ or anything. But it’s all so far away, and far removed from their daily grind.

Bucky, for example: Bucky’s a smart guy -- smarter than he pretends to be, Steve knows. But. He’s also pretty vague about anything outside the city limits. He only knows where Jersey is because he hates it a lot. He has a vague understanding of where Ireland is, and he’s aware that England isn’t far away from that, and maybe Italy isn’t too far from there? He knows that Indiana exists, because he’s got an uncle who lives there, but he’s not exactly certain _where_ it is. He could learn geography if he wanted to, if he _needed_ to, but he _doesn’t_ want to, and he doesn’t need to. He knows New York like he knows his own mother. He knows where the Grand Canyon is because he wants to visit, someday. That’s enough for him without learning about the Rhineland, the Sudetenland, Austria, Poland, all that stuff.

Steve knows full well what he thinks of Hitler, what he thinks of the Nazis and the probability of war. Steve’s big dumb heart bleeds for the refugees. He hopes to God that the stories coming out of Europe really are lies, like so many people say they have to be. No one has forgotten the atrocity stories that got circulated before the last war -- and no one has forgotten that they were all lies. Everybody lost something, last time around. No one is excited about the thought of going back and doing it all over again. Everybody’s got a reason to be anti-war; heck, even Steve voted for Norman Thomas, back in ‘36.

But that was then.

 

* * *

 

It’s ‘38, and Steve and Bucky should both be studying, but instead they’re arguing about appeasement. “We’re handing them the advantage,” Steve says. “Every minute we let them keep--”

“Sure, I guess,” Buck says, with a careless shrug that gets under Steve’s skin and _itches._ He doesn’t understand how Bucky -- how _anyone_ can be so indifferent. “Look, I know that the whole… situation in Europe is all _fakakta,_ but you can't just _demand_ that everyone get up, and cross the damn ocean to fight injustice on the other side of the world. You don’t get to decide what other people think any more than Hitler does.”

Steve looks comically offended by that. “I would _never--”_

“I know you wouldn’t,” Bucky says, with an easy smile. “But them's the breaks. You can’t make people’s choices for ‘em.”

“Come on, Bucky, it’s not like it’s a hard choice. If there’s bullies out there, people oughta stand up to them. It’s the right thing to do.”

“Says you maybe, but you actually _like_ fighting.”

“I don’t like fighting,” Steve protests.

Bucky actually laughs out loud at that, a big _Ha!_ that rings through the whole apartment. “Pal, we both know that you're three gallons of fight in a half-pint jar, don’t even _try_ to deny it.”

Steve opens his mouth, ready to argue, but Bucky just points at the wall, where the cartoon is tacked up. It’s one of many by now -- there’s their landlord, sitting on a pile of gold like Ebenezer Scrooge. There’s a sketch of Becca Barnes (now Proctor) smiling in her wedding dress with Scott gazing at her like she’s his whole damn world. And there’s the Steve Monkey picking a fight with Bucky Bear.

Steve scowls, heavy brows coming together over his long, twice-broken nose. “I ain't a bully,” he says quietly.

“That you ain't,” Bucky agrees. “But come on, pal. You love having a fight -- nah, listen, you love having something to fight _for,_ yeah? Way I see it, you just like things to be…” He pauses, looking for the word. “Clear,” he decides. “Most of the time, life’s complicated, but it gets real _un_ complicated, real quick, when there’s a bad guy and all that matters is stopping ‘em.” Bucky shrugs easily. “I get it, alright? I do. It’s okay.”

Steve’s mouth is open, ready to argue, ready to… but he closes it. His shoulders drop. He sighs, defeated.

Bucky laughs again, softer this time.

“Don’t laugh at me. You like it too,” Steve accuses.

Bucky stops laughing, smile frozen on his face, incredulous. “What?”

“Three time welterweight champion, right? All those fights you’ve gotten into, all those…” He trails off, thinking back, to back alleys and bruises, and always Bucky there with him, fighting.

Bucky’s expression reminds Steve of the time Bucky’s ma found out that he’d been going to see Mary O’Reilly instead of going to the library with Steve. Bucky had looked cornered, and nervous, and ready to lie his way out.

The look slips away as quickly as it appeared. Bucky shrugs one shoulder. “Yeah, I like a clean fight sometimes. You got me.” He smiles and cocks his head, a look both smug and self-deprecating. Laying on the Bucky Barnes Charm real thick. “Who doesn’t, right?”

“Right,” Steve says, slowly.

Bucky’s a pretty good liar, Steve can’t always tell. There’s a thing he does with his mouth, a quick unhappy downturn, but Steve’s not sure whether he saw it this time. So Steve tries to convince himself that it’s probably true. Bucky likes fighting -- Steve has seen him come into a fight, fists swinging easy. Bucky’s _good_ at fighting, he’s strong and fast, and he’s got a brain for angles of attack, for sneaking in a punch that should be impossible. Bucky’s good at fighting, and if he didn’t enjoy it, at least a little, he wouldn’t do it.

The alternative -- that Bucky only fights because of Steve, and that he hates every second of it -- is too painful to contemplate.

 

* * *

 

It's winter 1938. Steve is twenty, Bucky's twenty-one, and they've just heard the news. Government-sanctioned rioting and looting all across Germany. Hundreds of Jewish owned businesses, hospitals, schools, and temples smashed and burned. Broken glass shattering out across the streets of Germany, and no one even tried to stop it. _No foreign propagandist bent upon blackening Germany before the world could outdo the tale of burnings and beatings, of blackguardly assaults on defenseless and innocent people, which disgraced that country yesterday,_ they said in the Times.

“I just don’t think it’s right, for us to stay out of it, after this,” Steve says, frowning seriously. Both he and Bucky are sitting at their rickety kitchen table. Thin winter sunlight filters in through the canvas tacked up over the draughty window, bathing them both in soft, blurry light. “It’s so obvious. So _simple._ They need to be stopped. Why is this even a question?”

“Come on, buddy, you know it ain’t that easy,” Buck says, falsely light. He doesn’t look up from the textbook he’s reading, or the pages where he’s making notes.

Steve does look up from where where he’s studying a color wheel. It’s hard -- he doesn’t see colors like other people, doesn’t have a feel for them, or the way they fit together, but if he wants to pass this class, he has to figure out a workaround.

“I didn't say it was easy. I said it was simple,” Steve says. He frowns. “How are you not agreeing with me on this? Your ma--”

Bucky looks up at him sharply. Warning. “Don't assume you know what I think because my ma goes to Temple. Don't assume you know what my ma thinks because her last name used to be Cohen.”

Steve ducks his head. He was out of line and he knows it. “You're right. I'm sorry.”

Bucky makes a harrumphing sound. “Yeah I bet you are, I can hear the _but_ coming from here.”

 _“But,”_ Steve says, which makes Bucky roll his eyes. “It doesn't matter who he's picking on, he's still a bully, we got a responsibility to--”

“Responsibility, nothin’. We got no right to go meddling. It's none of our business. This is Vinegar Hill, not Vienna, Steve.” But he’s frowning, and Steve can see that it’s getting to him. It must be getting to him. He’s probably got family back in Europe, on his ma’s side. Even if they don’t speak, even if they didn’t do right by his ma, they’re still _family._ Even though Bucky doesn’t have much time for the world outside the city, he’s smart enough to know...

“It ain't gonna stop in Vienna,” Steve insists. “They're _bullies._  They won't stop until someone makes them.”

 

* * *

 

It’s February 1939, and there are over 20,000 homegrown American Nazis marching in Madison Square Gardens. Steve hears about it on his way home from work, and doesn’t even go home, he just goes straight to midtown. He's not even surprised to find Bucky already there, along with some other fellas from the neighborhood, grim faced and full of outrage.

“This ain't Vienna,” Bucky says, when Steve asks what he's doing here.

For all that the crowd in the gardens is huge, the crowd outside is bigger, and Steve feels like a part of something, an army rising up against injustice. He's high on it, the righteousness, the pure simplicity of it. This is where he needs to be: standing up to fascism. It takes him out of himself. He’s part of something bigger than his dumb, broken body.

They shout, and press against the police barricades, and make it generally known that Nazis ain't welcome in New York.

In the crowd, chanting their displeasure, he glances up at Bucky, checking in. He doesn't see his excitement reflected there. Bucky has a set line between his brows, and tension in his jaw. And yeah, he looks pissed off, but it’s turned inward, not outward. He’s grim. Determined.

Steve hooks his finger around the hem of Bucky’s sleeve so they don’t get separated in the press of people.

 

That night, Steve punches his first Nazi.

It doesn’t matter what the asshole said, or who he was. It doesn’t matter if he had a name, or a story, or a reason. It doesn’t matter if he had a family. Steve doesn’t care who he was, it’s irrelevant. He’s just a mouthpiece, spewing bile and lies. Steve will never repeat what the guy said.

What matters is that Steve slams his closed fist into the bastard’s face and it hurts gloriously, it hurts like being alive. Only doing the right thing hurts this much.

The punch connects and the guy staggers back, bleeding. Steve looks up, his eyes seeking out Bucky on instinct, automatically. Bucky is there, just a few feet away; obviously about to step in to save Steve’s ass yet again. He’s got the wrath of God in his face, but then the Nazi topples backwards at Steve’s blow. Bucky stops dead and his brows go up in surprise.

Steve grins with half his mouth, stupidly proud of himself. 

Bucky says nothing, his face going lax, eyes black in the half-light from the streetlamps, full of something heated, that Steve’s never seen before and--

And then someone bumps into him, hard. He hears a hurried “Sorry pal!” as he stumbles forward. The toe of his shoe (too big for his feet, stuffed with newspapers) catches on the uneven pavement and the ground comes rushing up and--

 

* * *

 

Later that night, back at the apartment, Bucky sets Steve's broken nose. Steve looks like he went ten rounds with a wrecking ball and Bucky… Bucky looks like his own mother: exasperated and irritated, and grumbling in Yiddish under his breath, because swearing in English simply isn’t enough, apparently. He’s been doing that more and more lately, Steve has noticed. Like it’s some kind of reaction. The more the world tries to crush his mother’s people, the more Bucky embraces that part of himself. Maybe Steve’s inherently spiteful nature is catching.

“This is gonna hurt,” Bucky warns, putting his thumbs on either side of Steve’s nose. “And you very much deserve it you dumb fucking--”

Steve winces as the bone crunches back into place, his eyes watering and teeth gritted.

 _“--Shlemiel,”_ Bucky finishes. He leans back and gives his handiwork a critical eye. “It’s gonna be crooked.”

“It was already crooked,” Steve points out.

“You do know that the idea was to _protest_ violence, not create more of it,” Bucky complains.

“You don't beat bullies by letting them hit you,” Steve says, voice thick through his stuffed up nose.

“Oh yeah? And did the fucking pavement say something about your ma that I didn’t hear?” Bucky slaps a rag full of chipped ice into Steve's hand.

“Yeah, yeah, I know.” Steve presses the cold rag to his face and winces. “You threw a coupla punches too,” he accuses.

Bucky grunts. “At least I didn’t try to pick a fight with the goddamn ground."

“I didn’t pick a fight with the sidewalk, Bucky, I _fell,”_ Steve complains.

But Bucky isn’t listening. He’s looking down at his left hand, his bloody knuckles. He flexes his fingers, staring down at them. He's frowning.

Steve regards Bucky thoughtfully, for a moment, in silence. “You really don't like fighting, do ya,” he says. It ain’t a question.

Bucky shrugs one shoulder, non-committal, face blank.

Steve’s heart twists a little at that. “If the cause is just--”

“You think the Nazis don’t think just the same thing?” Bucky says, head snapping up, eyes guarded, expression stiff and blank. It’s a mask that Steve sees too often on Bucky’s face.  

Steve opens his mouth. He closes it, frowns. “Maybe they do,” he says, seriously. “But they’re _wrong.”_

“I know they’re wrong. That ain’t what bothers me. Do _they_ know they’re wrong?”

“Does it... matter?” Steve says. “If they need to be stopped, does it matter?”

“How can it not _matter?”_ Bucky says, staring at Steve like he’s grown a second head. “It’s _war,_ Steve. Everything about war matters. You don’t-- you can’t just _start a war_ without a thought about the consequences.”

“When did you become a pacifist?”

“I'm not,” Bucky counters. “I'm _really_ not, I just…” Bucky sighs. “I dunno, man. _Thou shalt not kill_ always seemed pretty final to me.”

Steve's brows lift. “Who knew that you paid attention in Sunday school.”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “Altar boy. How many time do I gotta remind you? _Schmuck.”_

 

* * *

 

September nights find Steve and Bucky abandoning their homework, their projects, in favor of listening to their staticky radio and reading the papers. And not the sports section, neither. The little vertical line between Bucky’s brows is semi-permanent now. Steve has chewed his bottom lip bloody more than once.

“A month,” Bucky says, on October 6th. “A goddamn month to invade a whole damn country. Jesus wept. How in the hell is that even possible?” He’s got the radio in pieces again. It’s a sorry, battered thing that he found abandoned in an alley, and fixed up as best he could. But he keeps having to take it apart and tweak it to keep it more or less working.

“He knew what he was doing,” Steve says, “and he didn’t hesitate.” He folds his paper with a snap and chucks it aside. He takes a deep breath. He lets it out. “Fuck,” He says, after a moment’s deliberation.

Bucky looks up. His face lights with a delighted _at last! my time has come!_ sort of expression. “Language,” he says, grinning.

Steve gives him a flat look. “If there was ever a time for it, the time is now. There’s gonna be a war.”

“Not here,” Bucky says. “We’ve already declared neutrality, pal.”

“Yeah, and _that’s_ not gonna change. Sure. The Nazis will definitely respect _that.”_ He grabs the paper and shakes it. “They have so much respect for sovereign nations, as we know.”

“Yeah, but they’re scared of us. They want us on their side. Or at least, they don’t want us standing against them.”

“God knows why, though. We’re a mess. The army is--”

Bucky’s hand slips, and bangs against something in the radio. “Shit!” He pulls his hand back sharply, and there’s blood on his palm. He holds it absently away from himself, busily peering into the guts of the radio to see if he’s broken whatever it was he was trying to fix.

Steve gets up and gets their little tin box of medical supplies, an inheritance from Sarah Rogers. It still smells a bit like her, when Steve opens it. Or at least, the smell of gauze and rubbing alcohol always makes him think of her.

By the time he gets back to the table, Bucky is still ignoring the cut on his hand, holding it up and away from himself in a vague way, attention still focused on the radio. Steve takes Bucky’s hand and starts cleaning the cut, not even asking permission, because this is how they are around each other, and always have been. They don’t ask, they just do.

“Oi,” Bucky says, vague protest at the sting of the wound being cleaned.

“Can it, ya big baby,” Steve shoots back. “You’re lucky this doesn’t need stitches.”

“I’m lucky I didn’t smash this fucker to pieces. Again.”

Steve shakes his head. “I don’t know why you’re bothering with that dumb thing.”

“We’re gonna need it. If…” Bucky’s eyes drift away from the radio, but don’t quite settle on Steve either.

“When the war starts,” Steve says, knowing.

“Before then,” Bucky says grimly. “There’ll be a draft. It’ll start soon.”

“Oh.” And somehow Steve hadn’t thought of that. Of course there would, it just hadn’t occurred to him because he knew that as soon as war was declared, he’d enlist, if they’d take him. He’s sure they’ll take him, eventually — they’ll need every man they can get, even guys like Steve.

But Bucky… Boxing champion, star pitcher, straight-A student. They’d go out of their way to get someone like Bucky. Steve knows the feeling.

Except Bucky doesn’t want to. Doesn’t want any of it, doesn’t want anything to do with the army. He’s no coward, he ain’t scared of a fight, and he ain’t a pacifist, either. He just doesn't want to go to war.

“We’re students though,” Steve points out. “We’ll be exempt from all that.”

Bucky nods. Shrugs. “For now.”

Steve returns his attention to Bucky’s hand, wrapping gauze to cover the cut. Bucky does this for him, and he’s taped up Bucky’s knuckles just as much. Two dumb kids like them, they were always needing someone to patch them up. Lucky the other was usually around.

Steve is suddenly struck by the thought of that not being the case anymore; of Bucky going overseas and getting hurt somewhere without Steve there to patch him up, or Steve getting hurt without Bucky around to bawl him out and set his broken nose. The _wrongness_ of that… There should never be one without the other. He can’t imagine it.

As soon as the thought comes to him, a plan follows close behind. “My dad was in the 107th,” Steve says. “I thought, if I got the chance to join up, that I could ask to be in his old unit, maybe.”

Bucky snorts. “I don’t think it works like that, Stevie.”

“Can’t hurt asking, though. Right?”

Steve looks up, quick and furtive, and for the first time, Bucky is meeting his gaze. They’ve been friends long enough that they can more or less read each other’s minds.

“The 107th?” Bucky says, just to make sure of it.

“Yeah,” Steve says firmly.

“Sounds like a plan.”

“Might not happen,” Steve says, looking away, tying off the knot on the gauze.

“Might not,” Bucky agrees.

But it feels inevitable, somehow. An awful kind of inevitability that sits like a rock in the pit of his stomach.

 

* * *

 

It’s 1940, and even though America isn’t officially in the war yet, everyone can agree that they’re scared, and that they need to be ready, ready for whatever. So there is a draft. Steve and Bucky are still students, still exempt.

For now.

 

* * *

 

It’s 1941, and Bucky is a complete philistine. It’s not that Steve didn’t know that Bucky was a complete philistine, it’s just that normally he doesn’t do it right here in Steve’s art class. Bucky was in the building for a technical drawing class that got cancelled, and just charmed his way into Steve’s life drawing class because he’d apparently decided that torturing Steve was how he wanted to spend his afternoon.

He says he wants to meet Virginia Miller, the curvy redhead who is their current life model. Steve made the terrible mistake of mentioning that Ginger was smart, and wants to be an artist herself, and really liked what Steve did with the shading in that one charcoal piece. Steve knew it was a mistake as soon as he started talking. Bucky’s eyes had lit up in a way that meant imminent peril.

Now, Steve is going to die of misery and embarrassment, because while Ginger might pity him enough to talk to him after class sometimes, there’s no way she’ll so much as look at him with Bucky in the room. The worst of it is that Bucky won’t even be trying. It’s his mere presence. It’s like having Bucky next to him turns Steve transparent.

“I hate you,” Steve hisses, looking over at where Bucky is doodling a stick figure. Bucky just glances at him sidelong, grins, and winks.

Once, Bucky had said that any girl who couldn’t see Steve for Bucky didn’t deserve Steve, like it was a test they had to pass. For the dubious honor of dating Steve. He’d said it with one hand pressed over his heart, and his eyes fixed on the horizon, like it was some noble sacrifice, _because he is a complete asshole._

“I know where you sleep, and I will murder you, Barnes,” Steve hisses.

Bucky raises a finger to his lips, very seriously. “Hush. Appreciate the art.”

And then the door bursts open, and everything, _everything_ changes.

Some guy that Steve doesn’t really know, but vaguely recognizes, comes busting into the room. He’s pale, shaken.

“They’ve attacked,” he says, words stumbling over each other in the rush to escape. “The Japanese. They hit Pearl Harbor.”

“Pearl Harbor?” Bucky says, staring stupidly, looking like a complete dope. “That in Queens?”

“It’s in Hawaii, you moron,” Steve says back. “There’s a navy base there, there’s--"

“There’s gonna be a war,” the guy says. “It’s on the radio, I just heard, outside, there’s--" and then he’s rushing back out the way he came, without even finishing the sentence.

Everyone drops their charcoal, including the teacher. Even Ginger jumps up and grabs her clothes, yanking them on haphazardly.

Outside on the street, there’s a knot of people gathered underneath a window where a housewife has her radio set out on the sill. A whole gang of folks are gathered around, listening to it, and Steve’s class joins them. No one’s talking except the broadcaster. It takes Steve a second to understand what’s being said.

“This attack is by air and can only come from aircraft carriers, since the Japanese do not have any bases close enough to the Hawaiian Islands from which to launch land-based aircraft,” some guy is saying, in a slightly nasally voice. He sounds like he’s trying real hard not to sound shaken. “This is a very great risk for the Japanese, to place aircraft carriers within reach of the very powerful naval patrol bombers, and the long range army bombers on the isle of Oahu…”

And suddenly it’s _real._ It’s real in a way it hadn’t been before. It’s not just a rumor, an idea. It’s not just something looming on the horizon, it’s _here._ There’s going to be a war. And even though it felt inevitable for so long, it’s still… It’s unthinkable. It’s impossible -- almost as impossible as half a dozen New Yorkers all standing around in total, eerie silence.

“It is a risk that would only be assumed as a very desperate measure. One which may well result in the loss of the carriers that are making the attack, but may also gain for the Japanese important time to carry out operations in the Far East…”

It’s like an earthquake, a silent one that everyone feels, like the whole world just changed direction. They’re all along for the ride and nothing more. An attack, and on American soil, and from the Japanese. They had ambassadors in DC, they’d been talking peace. The deceptiveness of it, the flagrant disregard for all the rules of war…

It’s a slap in the face of every American. For the first time, it hits Steve that maybe, in war, there really are no rules.

The owner of the radio has stopped kneading dough and is just staring into space, her hands covered in flour. Steve’s hands are covered in charcoal, and Bucky’s fingers are gripping tight to Steve’s sleeve, his whole hand shaking.

Bucky looks at Steve. Steve looks at Bucky.

Nothing is ever going to be the same.

 

That night, Bucky comes home with a bottle of whiskey and pours some for himself and some for Steve. The next day, they turn on Bucky’s  radio and listen as the president tells them. _A date that will live in infamy._

“This changes things,” Steve says, subdued. He looks over at Bucky and finds his friend staring at him already.

“You’re gonna try to enlist,” Bucky says, resigned. “Ain’t ya.” It’s not a question.

“I gotta try, Buck.”

Bucky looks away. “You think I’m a coward.”

“What?” Steve says. “Bucky, no, I know you ain’t--"

“And I don’t know, maybe I am, but II-"

“You _ain’t,”_ Steve snaps. “Jesus Roosevelt Christ, Barnes, are you deaf or just stupid?” He glares. “Just because I’m -- what did you call it?”

“Punk? Idiot? _Shlemiel?”_ Bucky says.

Steve pulls a face. “No, the other--”

Bucky looks up, his eyes meeting Steve’s, looking almost shy. He gives a half smile. “Three gallons of fight in a half pint jar?”

“Yeah. Just because you don’t feel the need to pick fights with every passing breeze doesn’t make you a coward or nothing.”

Bucky ducks his head, blows out a long breath. “I could help you, some.” He says. “If you want.”

Steve blinks. “Help me how?”

Bucky lifts a shoulder and lets it drop. “Boxing. Training. Pal, you get winded going up three flights of stairs. I can’t promise you nothin’, given the givens.” He gives Steve a look, up and down, and makes an exaggerated face of disapproval.

“Oh my god, you asshole,” Steve says.

“I mean, to be honest, you don’t need training so much as you need a full body transplant, but--"

“You asshole!” Steve says again, and practically dives across the table to tackle him.

It ends with Steve trapped under Bucky’s arm, struggling and squirming and completely unable to break free, with Bucky serenely lecturing him about form and all the ways he telegraphed that attack.

 

* * *

 

“We’ll start with the basics,” Bucky says, the very next day. He’s got boxing gloves on, but he hasn’t even bothered with any other protective gear. Steve meanwhile is smothered in gloves, a helmet, and a padded vest. 

“You’re enjoying this too much.”

Bucky grins. Then, without warning, Steve’s been clocked with a left hook that came out of _absolutely nowhere._

“Jesus!” Steve says, sitting up on the mat with no clear memory of hitting it. He’s not really in pain, but he’s damn glad Bucky insisted on the padding.

“Rule one: Stay alert. You wanna fight Nazis? Nazis are just bullies, and bullies don’t fight fair.”

Steve climbs to his feet, and brings his fists up into a guard. “I know that.”

“You gotta learn to know it with your fists, pal, because I telegraphed the shit outta that punch and you didn’t even try to stop me. Watch the shoulders.” Bucky taps his own shoulders with his gloves, then moves his fists back into the ready position. He raises his brows. “Rule two: You’re small.”

“Hey!”

“I’m not bein’ mean, I’m bein’ honest. You’re small, and weak. Own up to that now, pal. Use it to your advantage. A small target is harder to hit. And big…" Bucky cocks his head to one side. "Big means slow.”

This time Steve sees the punch coming, and lifts his fists to block it, but--

The punch connects hard enough to knock him down again anyway.

“Come _on,”_ Steve says, more to himself than to Bucky. He clambers back up. _Always get up._

“So. Bullies are big and slow, but they ain’t always stupid. So what have you gotta be?” Bucky says.

“Faster. Smarter.” He watches, fists at the ready, eyes on Bucky’s broad shoulders.

Steve ducks the next punch and it goes whistling over his head. He bounces back up, and grins.

“Now we’re cooking!” Bucky says. “Land one good punch and lunch is on me.”

 

Half an hour later, Steve manages one decent uppercut and then doubles over coughing. Bucky calls a stop, gets Steve into the familiar tripod position, and helps him breathe until the attack is over. He takes Steve out to the automat for lunch and doesn't even flirt too much with the waitress. 

They’ll try again tomorrow.

 

* * *

 

Bucky cautiously encourages Steve to try jogging, but insists on monitoring his progress. “If you keel over, I wanna fuckin' know about it,” Bucky says stubbornly.

Steve would be more flattered, but ‘monitoring his progress’ turns out to mean ‘flirting with cute girls while Steve does laps around the park.’

“I hate you!” Steve wheezes.

“Good!” Bucky calls back.

 

* * *

 

Even though he hates it, he sticks with it. It’s helping, he thinks. He’s better than he was, even a short while ago. There’s whipcord muscle on his skinny bones -- more than there used to be at least. It’s something.

“It’s not enough,” Bucky warns him. “There’s no way you’ll--”

“I gotta try,” Steve insists. “No harm in tryin’ right?”

 

* * *

 

Three weeks after Pearl Harbor, Steve gets his first 4F.

“There’s other ways to serve,” the doctor says.

 _It’s not the same,_ Steve thinks.

“There’s other work that matters,” the doctor adds, kindly.

 _But this work matters to me, Steve_  thinks.

The doctor puts a hand on Steve’s shoulder and squeezes. “I’m sorry, son. I know you’re disappointed. But this is bigger than you.”

 _That’s why I need to be a part of it,_ Steve thinks.

His eyes go to the sign behind the doctor’s head. _It is illegal to falsify your enlistment form._

He’s going to need to learn how to lie.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It’s a teeny tiny side mention, but Norman Thomas was a presbyterian minister who ran for president as a pacifist and a socialist. On the one hand, that put him in the same basic camp as the America First bozos, but on the other hand, he was also pro-birth control and anti-Japanese internment so… Anyway. Even though Steve is so full of fiteme I can’t imagine him personally being a pacifist, but also I can see him voting for Thomas out of a combination of high-handed morality and sheer pigheaded contrariness. 
> 
> The quote from the Times about Kristallnacht is a real quote from the actual Times about the genuine Kristallnacht. 
> 
> The thing about American Nazis in Madison Square Gardens is also terrifyingly real. I could not pass up the opportunity for Steve’s first Nazi-Punch to be in Midtown. 
> 
> Some pieces from the Pearl Harbor Scenes and the training montage are adapted from the First Vengeance comic. (except in the comic Bucky enlists and I REJECT THIS HEADCANON MY SMOL SON GETS DRAFTED. YOU CAN’T TAKE THAT AWAY FROM MEEEEE) 
> 
> Also, I found the Pearl Harbor radio snippet [here](https://www.historyonthenet.com/authentichistory/1939-1945/1-war/2-PH/19411207_1431_CBS_The_World_Today.html)


	6. What Tomorrow Brings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> add tag: heavily sarcastic quote unquote "PLATONIC" bed sharing *eyeroll*
> 
> Also: Thanks to My Incredible Superhero of a Girlfriend, who has become my beta reader. I got the best one.

## 6

 _So have a little faith_  
_And trust in **what tomorrow brings**_  
_You'll reach a star_  
_Because there are such things_

_-[There Are Such Things](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNrGGnS0qh4) by Stanley Adams, Abel Baer, and George W. Meyer, 1942_

 

(Much later, the Smithsonian politely asks for his input on their exhibit. He gives _some_ feedback. Not much. He doesn't think he has the right to tell people how to portray Captain America. Captain America doesn't belong to just Steve, after all. He only makes one hard and firm correction.  _Barnes volunteered for the Army shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor,_ and Steve sees red, briefly, a flash of rage he doesn't know what to do with. These days, he's got a lot of anger that he doesn't know what to do with. "That's wrong," he tells them, when he's sure he won't shout about it. "Bucky didn't join up. We were all enlisted men, but I volunteered for it. He didn't."

"We'll fix that," says the nice lady from the Smithsonian. She smiles, charming. If she's surprised, she doesn't let it show. "We'll catch hell from your fans though. It wasn't that way in the comics."

"Yeah, I bet it wasn't," Steve says, deadpan.

"If you don't mind telling me: how did it happen? Weren't you both students at the time?" she asks. She's trying to draw him out.

He stares at her. It's such a strange story. He tries to imagine it cropped and squashed, boiled down, reduced into a few lines of text on a display somewhere, for glazed eyes to skim past. They wouldn't be able to capture the whole of it, the way it should be told. Helpless, he shrugs. "Shit happens," he says, flat, and a little rude.

She doesn't try to draw him out again.)

 

* * *

  

“Sorry, pal,” Bucky says, slinging an arm around Steve’s shoulders after he comes out of the recruiting office with his head hanging down. “Hey, don’t worry about it. There’s a dance tonight, and Betty’s got this friend, Doris, says she’d like to meetcha.”

Steve isn’t listening. He looks down at his enlistment form, that laundry list of ailments, that damning 4F in the corner. He crumples it up and chucks it aside. Shrugs Bucky’s arm off. “It’s alright. I’m not worried. I’ll get in eventually.” He looks up at Bucky, jaw set, determined.

Bucky’s eyes dart to the enlistment form, crumpled and cast aside, and then back to his friend. “Steve...” he says, slowly.

Steve just shrugs again. He pushes his hair off his forehead. “Dance hall?” He says, changing the subject.

 

Doris mysteriously disappears shortly after they arrive, which Steve was already prepared for, and takes with good grace. It seems to put Bucky in a foul mood, though, and he only dances a few times with Betty before she finds someone less grumpy and Bucky comes back with hands shoved deep in his pockets. “Let’s get outta here,” he says to Steve.

They walk home mostly in silence. Bucky is scowling, and Steve wants to tell him that he doesn’t blame Doris for not wanting to dance with him, and he doesn’t blame Betty for not making her, and Bucky shouldn’t take it so hard but then--

“What the hell did you mean?” Bucky says, and he sounds angry all of a sudden (except it isn’t all of a sudden, because nothing Buck does is ever _all of a sudden.)_ “‘I’ll get in eventually.’ The hell d’ya mean by that, huh?”

It takes Steve a minute to rewind to that. Bucky’s been stewing over this all night, Steve realizes. He musta been. Steve sets his jaw, shrugs his shoulders again. “They can’t say no forever.”

“Pal, they only gotta say no once. Whaddya gonna do, lie on your enlistment forms?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“Cuz they’ll fuckin’ arrest you, Stevie!” Bucky snaps.

Steve just shrugs again. “Okay.”

“Okay? Okay?!”

“We’ve been attacked. People are dying. I can’t do nothing, Buck.”

“Sure you can, it’s real easy.”

“For you, maybe!” Steve says. It comes out mean, and Bucky stops dead in his tracks. He stares at Steve with the hurt sharp in his blue-grey eyes. All Steve’s anger fizzles out in a second. “Shit,” he says. “Buck, I didn’t mean -- Shit. Bucky, I’m sorry, I’m just--”

Bucky smiles. In the half-light from the streetlamps, it’s the worst thing Steve’s ever seen on Bucky’s face. “Nah, it’s alright. It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”

Steve hates that look, that awful fake smile. “No!” he says sharply. “It’s not alright, don’t -- don’t do that, I’m an asshole.”

The terrible smile flickers and morphs into something genuine. “Well, pal, you said it first.”

“I’m sorry, Buck, I’m so--” Steve says. “I didn’t mean it like that, but I can’t -- I can’t just do nothing. I gotta keep trying.”

“I know.” Bucky slings an arm around Steve’s shoulders again. “I know you do, pal.”

Steve hunches in just a little, fitting easily under Bucky’s arm. His head knocks against Bucky’s shoulder, and he stares down at their feet, stepping in time with each other. Bucky’s still warm from dancing, and he smells a little like Betty’s perfume, and cigarette smoke, and sweat. Despite all that, it’s nice, being here, under Bucky’s arm.

 

It’s bitterly cold in the hall as they head up to the apartment. “You wanna share tonight?” Bucky says, once the door is shut behind them.

Steve shrugs. “If you insist.” It wouldn’t be the first time. Their apartment has heat, in name at least. But it doesn’t quite make it to the bedroom, and it’s not like the living room is a toasting rack either. So occasionally, Bucky offers like Steve’s the one doing him a favor, and Steve only accepts because he can convince himself that it’s true.

You’d think that Bucky was the warm one, but actually, he’s not. Boy’s got feet like ice cubes. Meanwhile, Steve’s dumb rabbity heart pumps blood around him so fast it’s like he’s always running a low-grade fever. Bucky gets under the covers first, rubbing his hands together, and with his good wool socks on over his icicle toes.

Steve turns off the lights a couple of minutes later and climbs in, pulling the covers up. They lie in the dark, back to back on the narrow bed, listening to the radiator banging. Steve is staring at the cracked wall, not sleeping and not saying a word.

“You know how my ma swears all the time?” Bucky says quietly, a smile in his voice.

“What?” Steve says, feigning alarm. _“Your ma? Swearing?_ Surely not." (Bucky’s ma once made an actual dock worker blush when he came to call out Mr. Barnes and found Mrs. Barnes with a rolling pin and _very specific ideas_ about where to put it.)

Bucky lets out a low chuckle. “Shaddup. I’m tryna tell you something, punk." He says it soft and serious. Bucky’s got a quip for everything, but if you want to get to the heart of what he’s thinking or feeling, it’s always a long, meandering journey through about a million sidetracks and detours. 

So Steve goes quiet, staring into the dark, waiting. 

Bucky sighs. “She tried to cut back, after I was born, after Pa came back from the war all… Well, he was jumpy around loud things, and my Ma is one hell of a loud thing.”

Steve lets out half a laugh through his nose.

 _“Shaddup,”_ Bucky says again. “Point is, she tried to cut back, but turns out, that only made it worse. Pa eventually told her that in the trenches, if your CO said _get your fuckin’ guns_ then you were gonna see action. But, if your CO said _get your guns,_  then you knew you were in trouble.” Steve feels Bucky shrug behind him. “After he told her that, she stopped tryin’ to cut back so much.”

Steve has to turn his face to hide his smile in his pillow. It seems like something he shouldn’t smile about, but he likes hearing about how Mr. and Mrs. Barnes fit together. It makes him wish he could go back and ask his mom more about his dad.

“And we’re lucky, you know?” Bucky says. “I know we are. Plenty of guys came back mean or ended up drunks. Plenty. And Pa is... well. You know how my pa is.” Steve once saw Bucky’s pa coaxing a feral cat into their back yard with tiny scraps of fish, cooing. He’s seen Bucky do the same thing, on their fire escape. “But..." Bucky takes a breath in. "He wakes up screaming sometimes. Still. He never talks about it, but…”

The sudden juxtaposition of mental images -- George Barnes getting frightened cats to eat out of his palm, and George Barnes in a trench somewhere, screaming -- leaves Steve speechless. He’d known that Bucky’s pa had been in the same war that had taken Steve’s dad away, but he hadn’t thought beyond that. It was hard to picture Mr. Barnes, with his big, gentle smile, and his deep, bass voice, waking up in the middle of the night, screaming and terrified -- just the thought of it gives Steve a sick feeling. “Oh my God, Bucky…”

“Yeah, it’s… Yeah,” Bucky says, his voice strained and thick.

“I had no idea,” Steve says softly.  He wants to turn around, but at the same time he doesn’t. It’s a little easier to talk about things like this when they’re back to back and staring into the darkness. Not  _easy,_ but easi _er._

“He never talks about it, but Ma -- I asked her about it, a couple of years ago, and she said: ‘I don’t know what the fuck they were fighting for, but I guarantee you it wasn’t worth it. Nothing is.’ You shoulda heard her when the stories started coming out of Germany. At first she said it was just, um… gentiles--” Steve can guess that she didn’t say _gentiles,_ “--using a people that they didn’t really care about as an excuse to start another war that we had no business being in. She doesn’t say that so much anymore, not since… well no one’s heard from Uncle Jacob in a few years now. And everyone’s scared for him, but…”

Bucky sighs hard. This is the core of it, Steve feels. The thing that Bucky’s been talking his way around to. “War’s got consequences you can’t predict,” Bucky says. “I know it’s inevitable sometimes, but I don’t know if it’s ever worth it.”

Steve bites his lip. He doesn’t say anything, he can’t, because--

“And I know that ain’t how you were raised, Stevie, I know that ain’t how you feel about it. You got that -- that death wish of yours.”

“What?” Steve says, coming up short all of a sudden.

“Martyrdom wish, whatever. I’m just. I’m tryin’ to tell you that war ain’t a place to find sainthood and a clean death. I’m sure that’s what your mom told you, about your dad, but it ain’t--”

“My dad died choking on mustard gas,” Steve says sharply. “That _his commanding officers_ ordered released.”

Bucky rolls onto his back so quick that the bed creaks. His head comes up like a gopher from a hole. _“What?”_

Steve rolls onto his back too, so their shoulders come together. They stare at each other, in the dark, and Steve realizes -- it’s not like he was keeping it from Bucky, but they don’t talk about this stuff. No one does. Steve’s dad died a hero, and that’s all anyone ever wanted to say about that. Except Steve's ma. She'd lied to him about plenty, but she had never lied about that. _It's too important, lad,_ she'd said, when she sat him down to explain.

“Germans didn't have much gas left by then, but we did. They were tryin’ to gas the Germans, and the winds changed. Dad made sure everyone else got out, and he paid for it. I _know_ war ain’t glorious, pal,” Steve says. “And you're right that I don't know war the way your family does. But…”

Abruptly, Steve turns his head, looks away into the dark. He can feel Bucky’s gaze burning on him. “But I do know death, pal. You know him and me are old friends from way back.” He makes himself look back at Bucky, and twists a wry smile. Bucky’s face is shadowy and indistinct, but that lone furrow is a stark line between his brows. “I’ve been dyin’ since I was about six years old. I’m twenty-three. I’m so…” He has to swallow it down, all of a sudden, has to swallow it back. “I’m so sick of _dying for no damn reason._ I don’t want to end up on a TB ward at age twenty-five, my greatest contribution to humanity a coupla signs on Flatbush Avenue. Bucky… I’m gonna die sooner rather than later. If someone's gotta lay down their life..."

 _Might as well be me,_ Steve thinks. Because what good is he, alive? He’s an artist who can’t see colors right. He’s poor Irish trash with no family. But God, has he got fight in him. And now he’s got a chance to do something with that. If he can walk into the mustard gas and save someone else, then it’ll be worth it. At least he won’t be leaving behind a wife and a son. 

"I just don’t see why I shouldn’t try to do some good," Steve says firmly. "Real good, you know?”

“You do good, Steve,” Bucky says, sharp, like he’s angry. “Jesus Christ. You do good every damn day, I can’t believe you think--”

“Bucky,” Steve starts.

“Don’t you start with me, Steven Grant Rogers. I swear to fuckin’ God. I’m so--” Bucky pushes himself up higher, glaring down at Steve. “First time I _laid eyes_ on you, you were doing good. Standing up to a guy three times your size and there's me thinking -- ‘Jesus, what the fuck am I doing?' You know?" He punches Steve’s shoulder, hard. "You expect so damn much of yourself, and everyone who sees it, everyone around you, we all suddenly start to do the same. It’s like your stupid is contagious," he says, throwing his hands up in the air, like he's turning into his own mother.

“Bucky, I’d never expect anyone to-- I ain't like that!”

"You _are_ like that, you dumb fuck. You think you don’t do any good? Christ, you make people  _want_ to do good, to do better, every damn day. _Every damn day._ You make the world better just by _walking around in it._ Do you know how fuckin' rare that is?"

Irrationally, he wants to put his hands over Bucky’s mouth, make these words stop somehow. It’s too much. His whole face is going red. “I ain’t like that. I’m not some kinda -- no one even _sees_ me, Bucky.”

“The ones who matter do. You’re an _inspiration_ , you asshole,” he says. “Not because you're little, or because you're sick, just because you're _you,_ and I… You inspire _me,_ okay? You…” He trails off. Steve sits up, trying to see better, because Bucky sounds -- he sounds -- "God. Can't you just ease up on yourself for five fucking minutes? Can't you just give yourself a goddamn break?"

Desperate. He sounds desperate.

"Steve, I can't -- I--" He cuts himself off with a sharply irritated sound and turns away, lies on his side again, facing away from Steve, muttering under his breath. “I can’t even look at you right now. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. _Dying for no damn reason._ You dumb, stubborn punk. I swear to fuckin’ god, you’ll be the death of me.”

Steve almost smiles, because Bucky being pissed off at him -- that’s much more familiar territory. He rolls onto his own side, facing away again. He chews harder on his lip. Against his back, he can feel Bucky’s shoulders tense and curve. He’s curling in on himself, curling in and away from this conversation, and that makes it easier for Steve to figure out what to say.

Steve lies still, just breathing, trying to think, trying to clear his head. “You do too,” he says quietly.

“What?” Bucky says, sounding annoyed.

 _You inspire me_ , Bucky had said.  _It's just the same_ , Steve wants to say. _Y_ _ou for me, it's just the same._ “You know what,” Steve says. “Come on, man. You know.”

Bucky kicks him under the covers. “Punk.”

“Jerk.”

They lie there in quiet for another minute.

“Okay, listen, maybe you’re right,” Steve says. “Maybe your ma’s right, that it’s not worth it. But…”

“But maybe you’re right, and your mom was right, and your dad was right,” Bucky finishes Steve's sentence for him, like he so often does. “Tree of liberty, blood of patriots, all that jazz.” He sounds tired, in a way that’s not going to be fixed by a good night’s sleep.

Steve clears his throat. "I know you're mangling Thomas Jefferson just to annoy me," Steve tells Bucky. 

"Jefferson was a jerk," Bucky says, also to annoy Steve. "Gimme Thomas Paine-in-the-ass instead."

"'These are the times that try men's souls?'" Steve suggests. 

"Yeah, you're a trial upon my soul. Go to sleep, Sunshine."

Behind him, Bucky curls tighter in on himself. It’s warm under the covers, at last. Steve shoves half his face into the thin pillow. He wonders what Buck’s thinking about that’s making him curl in on himself like that. Like he’s hurting.

He doesn’t ask, but he thinks… he thinks that despite what Bucky said, if Steve could go to war, and save Bucky the pain, he would. That’d be a fair trade.

 

* * *

 

A few months after that, while Steve is reading about an attack in Tønsberg, Norway, Bucky comes running in, red-faced and grinning and also terrified, to announce that _Jesus Christ, Stevie, I’m gonna be an uncle!_ And then he picks Steve right up off the ground and swings him around like he’s a dame, which makes Steve punch him hard and sharp in the side.

“Rebecca?” Steve asks, breathless.

“Of course Rebecca, ya meatball,” Bucky says. “If it were Jeanie or Susan we’d be going to a funeral instead of a party. Come on, Ma’s making a cake. Get your coat.”

“Me?”

“Yeah of course you, ya dope.”

Steve feels a little taken aback. “But I’m not--” part of the family, he wants to say, he always thinks, and it always makes Bucky roll his eyes.

He does this time too. “Oh my god Steve, it’s like you don’t want cake.”

Sarah Rogers didn’t raise a fool, and only a fool would pass up the chance for a cake made by Winifred Barnes.

 

When they get to the Barnes place, Rebecca really is glowing, cliched as it sounds. She beams when she sees them both, and hugs Steve just as tight as she hugs Bucky. It suddenly occurs to Steve that he’s become part of the family. For some reason he feels it even more right now, when they’re _not_ making a fuss over him, over including him because he is A Poor Orphan Boy. They just want him here because they’re celebrating, and they want him around to celebrate too.

Steve retreats to a corner of the room and does a sketch of Becca and Scott sitting together, eating cake with their shoulders bumping. Becca’s smile. Scott’s dumbstruck expression.

No one talks about the war. No one mentions that Scott’s already been to the enlistment office. No one wants to shatter the moment, the fragile joy of it, the peace.

Becca cries when Steve gives her the sketch, sheepish but having nothing else to offer. She pulls him into a weepy hug and clings. Awkwardly, he pats her back.

 

(Later, Steve thinks back to the party, and there are little things that he remembers noticing -- things about Bucky, because he's always noticing little things about Bucky. How excited Bucky was, how much he smiled, how much he hovered around Becca. Steve's never had much to say, one way or the other, about kids. But it occurs to him later that Bucky had always loved being a big brother. And maybe, he woulda wanted to be a dad too, someday.)

 

* * *

 

Rebecca’s daughter is born in August, 1942.

She was supposed to be born in October.

 

* * *

  

It was a bad visit at the hospital. Rebecca was still pretty out of it, and seemed to think that Judith was getting better. Judith ain’t getting better, and the treatments are expensive, and all the Barnes’s savings went to Becca and Scott, went to putting Bucky through school and… Every single Barnes is drawn and silent and terrified. It's not like they don't know what tough times are, they've helped Steve through plenty, but it's different when it's happening to you. And this is the worst thing that’s ever happened to them, as a family. Rebecca may recover, might even have more babies someday, but little Judith, if she lives (and it’s a big if) is going to be sickly forever. They know what that looks like. They know what it costs, because they know Steve. It doesn’t change how they look at her, though. They love her already, with every inch of their big hearts, but they can’t afford the treatments, and it’s not fair, it’s not fair.

They’re back at the house now, just coming up onto the steps, when Steve realizes that Bucky is still standing on the sidewalk. Steve looks back, and so does Winnie.

“Bucky?” Winnie asks.

For a moment, Bucky is mute. He shakes his head.

Steve’s been watching Bucky close these past few days. They’re spending more time at the Barnes’s than they do at their own apartment. Steve's doing what he can to help: they've helped him through plenty of tough times, the least he can do is be there for them in return.

It had been a while since Steve saw Bucky in his native habitat. He hadn’t noticed it before, maybe because he was younger and stupider, but he sees it now. Bucky is more than just the favorite son (they can joke about it because he’s the only son, and because everyone loves him.) He’s quieter than anyone else in his family, calmer than his ma, less jumpy than his pa. He's steady. It’s like they’re all spokes on a wheel, turning and moving and rattling, but Buck’s the axle. Buck holds them together.

He always made it look so easy, but Steve can see that it’s not. Especially now.

Bucky clears his throat. “I gotta…” he trails off, one thumb over his shoulder, then lets it drop, lamely. “I need some air,” he says. “Just… some air.”

Winnie pats her son’s arm, and Bucky nods, then turns away. His hands push deep into his pockets and his strides lengthen out as Steve watches him go. He’s got a bouncy walk, even now. Too much swing dancing, and he’s always dancing up on his toes, too bouncy even then.

“I’ll make tea,” Steve offers, as he follows Winnie in.

 

They all drink tea in silence. Jeanie and Susan are shoulder to shoulder at the kitchen table, and they’ve got some mending that they’re working on. Talking quietly together about something that Steve can’t hear. George has his arm around Winnie’s shoulder, and he’s staring into the distance, thinking, with his chin resting on top of Winnie’s head.

And Scott… He’s got his fingers in his hair. He’s staring into his teacup like it’s gonna give him answers. The tea has long since stopped steaming, long since gone cold and bitter. Scott Proctor is a good man, and it’s killing him that he can’t afford the treatments that might give his daughter a shot. She’s his daughter, and he wants the chance to know her.

There’s nothing Steve can say to make any of this better. There’s no one for Steve to punch, and he hates it. This is the thing about life in the modern age: it's all so much better than it was ten years ago, sure, and there's advances being made every day -- colorfully on display every time Stark has an expo -- but at the same time… everything is still so uncertain. An unexpected expense, a spell of bad luck and suddenly you're right back on the bottom. Helpless to stop the tragedy coming at you. Everyone is always one bad day away from 1917, 1929, 1941 -- whatever the worst day of your life was.

In the hall, the front door opens, and closes. Steve goes to see who it is, because the Barneses and Scott just can’t right now, and Steve can.

But it's only Bucky. He’s hanging up his coat in the hall, staring at the pegs, blankly. The sunlight coming in through the windows make deep shadows around his eyes, and Steve notices, with an artist's eye, the darkness painted underneath. Bucky hasn't been sleeping, but this is different: his face is flat, expressionless in a way that sends cold rocketing through Steve’s entire body.

“Buck?” Steve says quietly, thinking of Rebecca and Judith and wondering for a minute if Bucky went back to the hospital, if--

Bucky starts, and looks at him, and smiles, soft and sad and very fake. He shakes his head, but doesn’t say anything. He squeezes Steve’s shoulder as he passes, on his way into the kitchen. The Barneses and Scott are all there, sitting around the table, uncharacteristically quiet and grave.

“Hey,” Bucky says, soft and gentle. They all look up at him. “Sorry, I can’t stay long, I gotta…" He trails off. "But, I wanted to... ” He looks uncomfortable, then abruptly moves the tea out from in front of Scott and puts down a piece of paper.

It’s a check.

It takes Scott’s eyes a moment to focus, but when he does, he jerks back and looks up at Bucky. “Bucky, no,” he says, at once.

“Don’t,” Bucky says. “Don’t try to change my mind, pal. That’s my baby sister’s baby girl.”

There are tears in Scott’s eyes. “We can’t take this, this is--”

They all know what this means. There's no way Bucky can cover Judith's treatments _and_ keep up with his tuition payments. Being an engineer was Bucky's  _dream._  And... being a student is the only thing keeping Bucky from getting drafted. 

“Brother,” Bucky says, almost exasperated. “Just take the fucking money. This ain't a hard choice. I can always go back to school later.”

 _Unless he can't,_ Steve thinks, feeling like the ground is spinning under his feet.  _Unless he's gone._ Mrs. Barnes has her fist stuffed in her mouth, muffling a curse. Mr. Barnes stands up from the table so abruptly that his chair almost falls over. He leaves the room. He does that sometimes, when it gets to be too much. Steve was so used to it that he’d never thought to wonder why. But he supposes he knows a little better, these days.

“Jesus,” Scott says, and drops his face into his hands.

Scott enlisted, because it was a good opportunity for him. He had no other family, no connections. If he could make it in the army, he could make a better life for Becca. But once, at the bachelor party, Scott had told Bucky _don’t you enlist. Don’t you ever enlist, pal. You got something special, and I’d hate to see a war get mud all over that._ Scott’s a good guy that way.

Now, Bucky pats Scott’s shoulder. He looks over at his Ma, who just shakes her head with tears in her eyes. Bucky clenches his jaw. He shrugs one shoulder, then the other. “It’s fine,” he says. “This is more important.”

“Bucky,” Scott says, voice watery. “I -- Thank you, I --”

“Jeeze, don’t thank me. Just don’t break my sister’s heart, alright?” Bucky pats Scott’s shoulder again, and then leaves the room, back the way he came, pushing past Steve, moving fast. He grabs his coat and he’s out the door a moment later.

Steve doesn’t hesitate. He loves the Barneses. He really likes Scott. But they’re not his priority. He grabs his coat and follows.

Bucky’s halfway down the block and walking fast. Steve’s got to run to catch him, snagging Bucky’s sleeve. Bucky’s trying to light a cigarette while he walks, but his hands are shaking pretty bad.

“Hey,” Steve says. “Did you… did you already stop by the school?”

Bucky gets his smoke lit, takes a deep drag, and lets it out before he nods. He's been planning this for a while, Steve realizes. He must've been. Maybe since the day Judith was born. “Explained it to ‘em proper. Professor Jackson was real disappointed. Said if I ever decided to re-enroll, I should talk to him.” He takes a short, angry drag. “Like I’m ever going to get the chance for that.” He rubs his forehead hard with the heel of his palm, the smoke dangling dangerously from his fingers. 

He’s still walking fast. Normally he slows down for Steve, but he must be too distracted to think of it. Steve grabs his arm, makes him stop. “You did the right thing, Bucky.”

Bucky looks over, down and meets his eyes. There’s something searching in the look, like he’s not sure, and he’s trying to figure out how to believe.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Steve elaborates. “Everything about this is unfair. It’s a shitty hand you’ve been dealt but…” he shakes his head. “Giving Judith a chance. It’s the right thing.”

Bucky’s staring at Steve, and Steve knows what he's seeing, what he's thinking. If Judith lives, she’s probably gonna be like Steve: something easily breakable, full of sharp pains and sharper regrets. But that’s never stopped Bucky from liking the hell outta Steve. Bucky likes Steve better than _Steve_ likes Steve, for Christ’s sake.

“I know,” Bucky says. “I know it’s the right thing, but it…”

“I know.” Steve swallows. “But hey. Doesn’t mean they’ll call your number right away, does it. Maybe--”

“Steve, just…” Bucky pinches the bridge of his nose. “Just don’t.”

Steve swallows, his mouth an unhappy line. Then, he sets his jaw. It’s harder for Steve to hook his arm around Bucky’s shoulders, but he does it, tugging Bucky down in a friendly sort of way. “Come on. Let’s go to the pictures, yeah? That ticket girl with the red hair will be there now, won’t she?”

Bucky sighs, and lets Steve cheer him up, for once, instead of the other way around. It won’t take away the sting of giving up on his dreams, but…

But it’s better than nothing. Even when they’ve got nothing else, they’ve got each other.

 

* * *

 

Rebecca and Judith come home from the hospital together two months later, but Bucky won’t get to see that, because…

Bucky gets drafted a couple of weeks into September.

 

* * *

 

(Much later, he hears the story again, the way it should be told.

"That's how Momma used to tell it." Judith is at the end of the table, warm and alive and damn sprightly for her age. Her blue eyes glitter at him. "You were there, Steve." She doesn't even question it -- She just assumes he was there. He's not even a Barnes, but... well there aren't any Barneses here anymore. "That how it really happened?" she asks, a challenge in her voice. She takes a sip from her glass. 

They all look to him; the Proctors and Gillespies and Mortons and Chens. The table is  _packed_ , and they're all  _rapt_. Most of them have that Barnes jawline -- the stubborn angle of it, the perfect little cleft. Steve swallows, worried he's gonna get this wrong somehow. "Yeah, except. Well. There was more swearing, I think."

The whole table bursts into laughter, warm and booming. "Sounds about right!" someone says. "Sounds like Grandma Winnie," someone else says. Danielle snorts wine out of her nose, which sends them all into fresh gales of laughter. Steve pats her back.

"I can't believe you're not sick of that story," he says to Judith, when the laughing dies down a bit. "You musta heard it all the time." He's thinking of Tony.  _You're the guy my dad couldn't shut up about?_

"Sick of it? You kidding me?" she says. "Do you know how many history papers I aced by playing the James Buchanan card? How many dates I got? Heck, I wrote about him in my college application. You know how hard it was for a woman to get into an engineering program in 1960? Son, I played that card until it fell apart." Her eyes are sparkling. "Sorry to sound so mercenary in front of Captain America."

"Well I don't know if Captain America would approve or not," Steve allows. "But Steve Rogers is pretty impressed." He ducks his head, smiling shyly. "And... a little intimidated."

"Don't you flirt with me!" Judith says, clutching imaginary pearls with her age-spotted hands. "You're old enough to be my  _father!"_

The table bursts into laughter again, and it probably shouldn't be funny. None of this _should_ be funny, maybe, but it is, the way it always was, with the Barneses. Steve could always laugh about it, with the Barneses. Steve can feel his face going tomato red, and he has to lift a hand to hide how big his grin has gotten and -- God, His belly aches from laughing. It's been ages. It's been  _decades,_ and just because he wasn't awake for them doesn't mean it hasn't been _too long_ since he laughed like this. 

"Hey!" Scott Jr. pipes up from the other end of the table, cutting through the last of the laughter. He's got his father's red hair, somehow, and his freckles, but that's Bucky's forehead -- Or Becca's, or Winnie's, actually. And Scott's older than any of them were when Steve knew them. He lifts a glass. "To the scariest woman I know!"

The table roars agreement. Steve raises his glass with the rest of them. Judith is grinning, a sharp, toothy smile that's all Bucky, though lined and underlined. She's a spitfire, a hellcat, even now. Bucky would've loved her. He would've loved to get to know her. He would've loved that she used his name to get somewhere, to do some good. It hurts to think it, but it's a good kind of hurt. Deep, but clean. The kind of hurt that won't leave a scar.)

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "historical" "research"
> 
> The thing about swearing in WWI is a story I heard -- It's been bouncing around the internet for a while I think, and I couldn't find a source on it, but I like it as a logic reason behind why Mrs. Barnes didn't stop swearing (though in fact Mrs. Barnes swears because my grandparents did and I loved them dearly for it.)
> 
> A Note About My Second Favorite OC this fic (after Ruth From Chapter 3) -- Wee Baby Judith Proctor: I wasn’t able to find much on premie babies circa 1940, and I’ll be honest I did not hurt myself looking because the important thing, from a Doylian perspective was a) to give Bucky a reason to drop out of school and get his sorry ass drafted, b) provide a Next Generation Of Barneses(ish) for Steve and Bucky to be invested in, and c) give the Next Generation of Barneses(ish) a reason to be invested in their (dead) uncle, aside from “oh he’s famous or whatever.”
> 
> But, speaking personally for a moment, I have a famous-ish relative from that time period, and lemme tell you: the stuff that sticks, in family stories and whatnot, are the personal details, not necessarily the details of what they're famous for. I can definitely imagine Judith Proctor being like "I never met the guy, I guess he was at D-Day or something BUT HOO BOYO LET ME TELLYA ABOUT THE TIME THAT HE STOLE A PIE..."


	7. As Though You Were Here

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> praise be to the Gal Pal, who I accidentally dragged into Buckrogers Hell, and yet still she loves me. You are the best Beta Reader a girl could ask for.
> 
> For Maximum Continuity, go and read [Chapter One of the B-Sides](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15845442/chapters/36903066) after you read the chapter but before you read the Coda

## 7

 _Close to you I will always stay_  
_Close to you, though you're far away_  
_You'll always be near, **as though you were here** by my side _  
_No matter where in my dreams, I'll find you there_  
_-[Close To You](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moi67Sy9rsg) by Jerry Livingston, Carl Lampl, and Al Hoffman, 1943._

 

* * *

Steve comes home and finds it on the table. An order to report for induction, addressed to James Buchanan Barnes. He can hear Bucky being sick in the other room. Steve can understand -- he feels a bit sick himself. They hadn’t had time to prepare, to catch their breath. He wasn’t expecting it to happen so _soon._ He puts the letter down with hands that shake and goes into the living room, giving Bucky as much privacy as their shoebox will allow.

Bucky comes out shaken and grey a few minutes later, but he angrily insists that it was the fucking hot dog he ate for lunch. Steve doesn’t buy it, not for a second, but he pretends to. For Bucky's sake.

 

 _“Schlimazel,_ that’s what I am. That’s what Ma would say I am,” Bucky says later, after a couple of whiskeys. He's all unraveled now, no performances. He's not the neighborhood golden boy he used to be, not the studiously attentive young man he was to nuns and teachers, and not the swaggering ladies man he is at the dancehall. He's just Bucky, strings cut, curls pulling free of the brylcream, no overshirt, suspenders hanging loose. Just Bucky.

“Thought that was me,” Steve says. He's got a glass of whiskey in one hand that he hasn't touched yet. Bucky hates drinking alone, but Steve doesn't want to get drunk, so the whiskey is purely decorative. He'll give it to Bucky to finish later. This way, Bucky can get as smashed as he wants to, and Steve will be sober enough to look after him, and no one's pride will be too badly damaged. 

“Nah, you’re not a _schlimazel,_ you're a _schlemiel.”_

“What’s the difference?”

“They’re both unlucky bastards, but different kinds of unlucky. A _schlemiel--"_ he pokes Steve's toe with his own "--spills his coffee. Onto some poor _schlimazel’s_ fuckin’ crotch.” Bucky waves a hand at himself, grandiose in his drunkenness.

Steve tries to find it funny, but… he can’t.

He thought he’d be jealous, but he isn’t. Instead, he feels a kind of fierce desire to take Bucky’s place, not for himself, but for Bucky. To spare him from this.

Bucky would slap him upside the head for even thinking it.

 

* * *

 

First thing in the morning on September 21st, Bucky squares his shoulders and takes his card to the intake facility. He comes back with a serial number and instructions to report for basic training at Camp McCoy.

 

* * *

 

Steve goes with him to the train station after they say goodbye to the rest of the Barneses. The platform is full of curling steam and kissing couples, and guys like Bucky, trying to hide how nervous they are.

James Buchanan Barnes, 32557038, gives Steve a shaky smile and says “Hey, it ain’t the Grand Canyon, but I always said I wanted to travel.”

“Yeah, enjoy the glorious views of Wisconson, pal,” Steve tells him. “Don’t forget to write, or your ma will murder me, and then murder _you_ when you get back.”

“Can’t have that. And hey--” Bucky punches Steve’s shoulder, “don’t forget what I taught you. Jab, jab, cross. Don’t aim for his jaw, aim for the back of his skull, right?”

Steve rolls his eyes, but there’s something intense in Bucky’s expression. He’s worried about Steve. Not like that's new, but... Maybe the boxing lessons weren’t for when Steve got called up. Maybe the boxing lessons were for when Bucky got called up.

The thought makes him feel a little queasy. “Yeah, yeah,” Steve says. “Go on. Get out of here, ya jerk.”

Bucky chuckles at the old joke. “See you around, punk.” And then he hitches his bag higher on his shoulder and gets on the train.

 

* * *

 

The days are strange and hollow without Bucky there. The apartment is suddenly too large, too empty, and at the same time too small, walls closing in on him without Bucky to hold them back. It’s pathetic, how much he misses Bucky’s presence. It’s pathetic, how much he waits, breathless, for Bucky’s letters. Steve’s grimly accustomed to being pathetic, though. He knows how to carry on as though he isn’t.

 _Boot camp’s a riot,_ Bucky says, in his first letter. _You know how much I like a mouthy asshole shouting at me all the time. Now at least I’m getting paid to put up with it._

 _I have no idea what you’re talking about,_ Steve writes back. _I won’t even pretend to understand what you’re referring to. I will just say that I feel great sympathy for whoever now puts up with your snoring. Do they get paid for that?_

 

* * *

 

The Barneses start having him over every Sunday for roast (or what passes for it when you're on a budget). Steve has a suspicion. He thinks he can sense Bucky’s hand pulling the strings there.

 

(Later, on the front, on a rare Sunday off, Steve finds himself homesick as hell, not for his mom’s colcannon, but for Mrs. Barnes’s roast chicken. He remembers to thank Bucky for putting a word in, asking his Ma to look after Steve. Steve’s pride isn’t nearly so prickly now that he’s big; it’s easier to admit that he’d been lonely as hell, that Sundays at the Barneses had been a help. Bucky smacks him upside the head and tells him that he never had to _ask._ Mrs. Barnes extended the invitation all on her own, _and_ gave Bucky a talking-to for not thinking to invite Steve earlier.)

 

Steve gets to know Bucky’s sisters in a way he hadn’t before. Becca, he already knew pretty well on account of her and Bucky being so close. She’s staying with her folks while Scott is deployed. Steve helps Becca out a bit when she gets home from the hospital, but what she really needs help with is the baby, and Steve is _terrible_ with kids. Becca is real nice about it when Steve _drops Judith_ the  _very first time he is allowed to hold her,_ but she also decides that Steve would be put to better use literally anywhere else.

Steve is kind of alarmed to discover that Jeanie and Susan ain’t little girls anymore. They grew up when Steve wasn’t paying attention: eighteen and nineteen years old now.

Jeanie confesses that she had the worst kind of crush on him when she was about six. She teases him relentlessly for not noticing. Steve finds that he likes Jeanie -- not like _that,_ but he still likes her. She’s always got a quip and she never takes herself too seriously.

On the other hand, there’s Susan, who is sweet and kind, but also intense, and focused. She listens to the radio and reads the paper and gets more and more passionate every day. She’d fight in the war if anyone would let her. (Steve knows the feeling.) But she’s not about to sit around doing nothing in the meanwhile. And where Susan goes, Jeanie follows. Which is how they both end up getting jobs at the munitions factory, going off to work on Mondays with their dark curls pulled back and tucked away under scarves. No more loose waves here. It's all tightly pulled back from their square, stubborn faces.

A strange routine develops. Steve comes over for roast on Sundays, ends up spending the night on the couch more often than not because they stay up way too late talking politics. And then morning finds him at the end of a chain of seated women -- Becca holding Judith while getting her hair done by Susan, who’s getting her hair tied back by Jeanie, while Jeanie gets her long dark curls done up by Steve, who's surprisingly good at that kind of thing, it turns out.

“If any of you tell Bucky, I will never live this down,” Steve says.

“Cross our hearts and hope to die,” the Barnes Girls chorus as one.

 

 _Hey there, Stella,_ Bucky says, in his very next letter. _Hear you’re gonna start a salon. Don’t forget to share all the hot gossip with me, doll._

 _I hate you so much,_ Steve writes back.

 

* * *

 

It's almost, but not quite, like having Bucky there. It’s different.

It’s different because Bucky’s good at hiding stuff, better than Steve is. When Steve can see his face, he can usually tell, at least. But now, all Steve’s got are the words: the things Bucky says, and the vast empty spaces between them, full of shadows and uncertainties.

 

Later on, in one of the letters: _sorry this one’s short, pal. Guess I’m just tired. Basic is fine and all, but ~~it's like they're trying to~~ there’s a lot of stuff to do. ~~Some of the guys here are real~~_ _Feels like there’s never a break from it, I guess. Never mind me, I’m fine._

 

He says that more and more, as October turns colder.

_I’m fine._

_Never mind me._

_I’m fine, just fine._

_Tell me about Brooklyn._

He says that most of all:

_Tell me about Brooklyn, Stevie._

And Steve’s not an idiot. He can read between the lines there, and though Bucky never says _I miss you, I miss home, I hate it here,_ Steve can hear it in the silences. He can hear it.

 

But this is the thing: for all that he hears what Bucky ain't saying, every Sunday, from Bucky's parents, Steve hears something else.

“Bucky says he got top marks on his aptitude tests.” So it’s not like Bucky ain’t doing well.

“Bucky says he scored top of his group in marksmanship.” So it ain’t like he’s not trying his best or anything.

And then, one Sunday when they’re all gathered around the Barnes’s battered dining table: “Bucky says his Sergeant pulled him aside for special training.”

They’re proud of him, of course -- they all are, Steve’s no exception -- but it’s a relief too. “More training is good,” George says, staring at something that ain't there. “He’s not ready.”

“George,” Winnie says, covering his big paw with hers.

“Not that you ever are,” he says, with more bitterness than Steve’s ever heard in his big, rumble of a voice. “But more training is good.”

They all know, and no one says... The longer his training goes, the longer he’s away from the front.

 

* * *

 

One Sunday near the end of November, Steve walks over to the Barneses after church and finds no one home except Becca and Judith. Becca must have been watching for him, because she yanks the door open before he knocks. She’s brandishing a letter and for a second Steve thinks _oh God, please no,_ but Becca is grinning, hugely, from ear to ear.

“Bucky's getting a week’s furlough in December," she says. "He says he thinks they’re gonna send him away for more training!”

“Not to the front?” Steve says, breathless from emotional whiplash. None of them were exactly certain -- Bucky is so cagey and breezy about giving details, and no one really knows how badly the army needs bodies at the front.

“Not to the front!” Becca confirms, blue eyes sparkling.

They hug, and almost topple over from the force of it, the relief of knowing that there will be more training, more time to know that Bucky is safe, is okay, isn’t getting shot at for real.

Steve’s wheezing when the hug breaks, weak at the knees from relief and lack of air. Becca rubs his back. “Come on, come in. Tea.” She drags him inside and pushes him down at the kitchen table. He braces his elbows on his knees. _Breathe,_  he thinks. _It’s gonna be okay._

Becca’s moving around, making tea and absently checking the crib each time she passes it, but Judith is sleeping peacefully. She’s tiny, Steve thinks. She’s only been out of the hospital a month or so, and she’s doing just fine, and Scott’s got a furlough coming up too, and now this… Becca looks like she’s floating on it; like all the good news is buoying her up. She hands over the letter along with a cup of tea and Steve settles in to read it.

   

 

> Hello Brooklyn Barneses,
> 
> Well I guess the first thing you’ll want to know is that I’ve got a furlough the first week of Dec. So I’ll finally get to meet Baby Girl Proctor properly. I expect the full welcoming committee, mind you. Fanfare and trumpets. All the bells and whistles.
> 
> Basic's gone real well. I guess I did pretty okay: the Sergeant is giving me a special recommendation, so I’ll be shipping out -- not to the front, not yet. Special training of some kind. Should be a challenge. Can’t say where they’re sending me yet -- even if it weren’t classified, you know me and maps.
> 
> Anyhow, I'm doing just fine but missing all of you. Send me a nice long letter full of news and stories.
> 
> See you soon!
> 
> Bucky

 

Steve reads through it again, frowning. This isn't like the letters he gets at all. It's neat, and polished, and chipper. There are no scratchings-out, none of that thin veneer of ‘fine’ painted over misery.

“Isn’t it wonderful?” Becca says, turning to him, beaming. She looks exhausted. Of course she does. She’s got a three-month-old.

“I don’t understand,” is all Steve can think to say. The tone of this letter is nothing, _nothing_ like the letters he’s been getting from Bucky.

“What’s not to understand?” Becca says, plonking down into the chair beside him.

“I just…” He looks over at Becca, but she’s just grinning. “The letters he sends to me aren’t... like this,” he finishes, lamely.

Becca’s no fool, and she knows Bucky as well as anyone, except maybe Steve. She purses a little frown. “Yeah? What are they like?”

Steve’s brow furrows. “It’s all… between the lines. He never says outright but he’s… He’s not happy. He sounds miserable.”

"Hm." She pauses, and considers this, expression going serious and somber. “You’re sure?” she says, quiet and firm, sounding like her father, like Bucky.

Steve chews this over. He worries his bottom lip between his teeth, and then nods. “I know him, Becca. I’m sure.”

Becca gives him a look then, eyes a bit narrowed. Then she visibly shakes it off. “No," she sighs, brows unfurrowing. "That makes sense.”

“Does it?”

She nods. “He’s different things to different people, always has been. You remember how he used to suck up to the nuns? Every teacher in the school wrapped around his little finger. He said it was exhausting.”

Steve hadn’t thought of it that way. Sure, Bucky was a performer. Steve had envied that; Bucky's ability to read a room, and change himself to fit inside it. Steve had never been able to be anything other than  _Steve._  He couldn't even tell a decent lie. And then there was Bucky, who gave ground with grace, and bent a little bit here and there, and made life easier for everyone around him. Steve had never made life easier for anyone. That was why he'd gotten an early reputation as a troublemaker, while Bucky stayed the golden boy, the favorite son. It seemed to come so naturally to him. He made it all look so effortless. Steve had always assumed that it was.

Becca is watching him. “You didn’t know that?” she says.

Steve shakes his head.

“Well, I guess you wouldn’t. He puts on a good show, my brother,” she adds. “But if he’s miserable, you’re the one person he wouldn’t hide that from. 'Cept maybe me, but... I've been a bit busy.”

Steve can feel his ears going pink, but Becca isn’t looking now. She's stirring her tea, slow and deliberate. “Ma and Pa, though?” She shakes her head. “What good would it do them, knowing that?”

Steve fiddles with the corner of the letter, frowning. “I’m worried about him, I guess.”

She grabs his hand and squeezes. “We all are. But this is good news. If he gets special training, maybe he gets a promotion. The more he can do to make himself valuable to the army, the less likely they are to just… you know.”

 _Throw him in front of the nearest cannon,_ Steve thinks, feeling a bit ill at the thought, but… “You’re right,” he says. “You’re right. This is good news.”

“It’s _wonderful_ news.”

It is wonderful. Bucky’s coming home, and even if it’s only for a week, that ain't nothing.

 

* * *

 

Steve knows that Bucky’s different, as soon as he steps off the train. It’s not that Bucky comes back a _changed man_ or anything like that. He's still James Buchanan Barnes, but it is a little like how sunlight through a window pane is very different from sunlight through a magnifying lens. It's just sunlight, coming through glass, but it acts differently when it's been given focus.

He steps off the train already grinning his big grin. He waves enthusiastically when he sees that the whole family is there, even little Judith, who is tiny, and bundled up in blankets, but her lungs are much better now, and she’s growing real fast. He strides over to them, and Steve can’t help cataloguing how he’s different. It’s in the way he moves, the way he holds himself. His _walk_ is different. Something between a march and a swagger, all the bounce gone out of it. It’s a soldier’s walk, not a dancer’s walk.

Steve hangs back as Bucky hugs his ma, and then his sisters, and then kisses little Judith on the forehead.

“Judith Buchanan Proctor,” Scott tells him.

Bucky groans loudly. “No. _Why?”_ But he’s pleased, secretly. Steve can tell, and so can everyone else. Becca is laughing. “I’m so sorry, kiddo,” Bucky says to the baby. “You didn’t deserve that.”

Steve is hanging back, hands in his pockets. Envy is an ugly, ugly thing, but he can’t help it. Bucky looks so easy in his skin, and he’s surrounded by his family, and they all get first crack at hugging him. So Steve’s just full of jealousy -- great big helpings of it for everyone he’s looking at.

“Where’s--” Bucky is craning his neck, and the grin makes a reappearance when he sees Steve. It leaves Steve breathless. “Steve! Get over here!”

And, God, when Bucky pulls him into a hug and there are new muscles. Lots of ‘em. His back is broad with them, his arms thick with them. He’s warmer, how is that even possible? Bucky squeezes him, a big booming laugh buzzing through both of them. _Just kill me, it would be kinder,_ Steve thinks dazedly.

 

* * *

 

They all go to the Barnes place after, and there’s coffee for everyone, and some celebratory whiskey, and a roast, and music on the radio. It’s all warm and close and loud, everyone laughing at Bucky’s apparently endless supply of funny boot camp stories.

Steve starts to think that maybe he was imagining something dark in Bucky’s letters. Bucky’s all happy and smiling and standing tall. There’s nothing sinister here.

The night wears on, and after dinner, Bucky pops outside for a cigarette with Scott. The two soldier boys. Mrs. Barnes is pulling pudding out of the oven, and sends Steve to fetch them.

He’s just stepping out into the hall that goes out to the back garden (though it ain’t much more than a square of concrete with a laundry line and weeds coming up through the cracks) when he hears Bucky’s voice, low, but tense. “But we ain’t supposed to be like that, are we?” Bucky is saying. Steve tips his good ear closer, and walks a little slower and softer. “Our side… I dunno, Scott, it doesn’t feel right to talk like that, even about the Krauts. Even about the Japs, you know?”

“They’re just talking big because they’re scared,” Scott says, quietly. “Just scared, dumb kids talking big.”

“I’m a scared dumb kid,” Bucky hisses, “you don’t hear me talking about putting a hole in the back of someone’s skull so I can f--” Bucky cuts himself off, and Steve can hear him taking a long drag, can hear his foot tapping a jittery rhythm against the step. “I hate it. God. S’bad enough we’re gonna have to kill people, it’s war. But can we not… They’re still _people.”_

“Bucky,” Scott says, quietly. “That’s not… Ya might not want to keep thinkin’ like that. The people you’re gonna be goin’ up against… they chose to fight for the Nazis. Far as I’m concerned, they gave up any right to be people when they did that. Look, I’ve been over there, you haven’t. What the Nazis are doing… It ain’t human. They ain’t human.”

“They _are,”_ Bucky insists. “Bad people are still _people,_  I just--”

Steve can’t delay any longer. He resists the ridiculous urge to knock and just pokes his head out onto the back stoop. “Hey.” The two of them jump a little, and turn to face Steve, staring at Steve with matched expressions caught between surprise and irritation. Steve feels terribly like an intruder, an outsider. They’re two soldiers, sharing the camaraderie of brothers-in-arms. It’s a club that Steve isn’t part of, and the jealousy may well eat him alive. He makes himself smile “Sorry. Winnie’s got dessert for us. Come on.”

 

* * *

 

Bucky comes back to their apartment after.

He had insisted on continuing to pay rent. “I want a place to stay that isn’t my ma’s living room floor, dammit,” he had said, brusque and stubborn, like it wasn’t all about making sure that Steve stayed somewhere warm and not too shitty. Steve had argued, but Bucky wouldn’t budge, and so a portion of his army salary kept going into their joint rent check, even though Bucky wasn’t there anymore. And with Becca and Judith and Scott all staying with the Barneses, it’s pretty tight quarters all around. “Man needs his space,” Bucky had insisted to his ma. “I’ll see you all tomorrow.” And then he’d come home with Steve, and it made Steve feel… well, nevermind what it made Steve feel.

Bucky drops his bag on the floor and kicks off his shoes. He tosses his hat aside, loosens his tie. He drops into his three-legged armchair. The corner’s propped up with newspapers now. He runs his fingers over the stack of detective novels by the chair. He gives a half-smile. “Home sweet fuckin’ home.”

“Ya know, I got real used to not having my ears constantly assaulted these past couple months,” Steve grumbles, looking away. Christ that uniform. It looks _good_ on Buck.

“You think _I’m_ bad? Let me tell you, buddy, I’ve learned some new shit, and it ain’t all sharpshooting, you know?”

“Is that what the extra training’s for?” Steve says, sitting on the bed that also serves as a sofa and pulling his knees up, like they’re kids again, and Buck’s reading out stories from the magazine. “Designated marksman?”

Bucky licks his bottom lip. “I shouldn’t tell you. It’s… not top secret, but it’s definitely some kind of classified.”

“Well. You don’t have to tell me if it’s gonna compromise the war effort,” Steve assures him, with a shit-eating grin.

“Shaddup,” Bucky groans. He’s still smiling. He pauses for a moment, thoughtful. “You know, I thought it was gonna be all ‘run here, pick up that, punch this,’ and there’s a lot of that, don’t get me wrong, but the shooting -- you know they picked me for it because they knew I’d gone to school for engineering? I got to learn the guns, and it’s not as easy as point and shoot, you know? I gotta do _math.”_ Bucky’s grinning like an idiot.

Steve groans. “Only you would be excited about that, ya meatball.”

Bucky’s grin broadens. “Yeah, yeah.” He lets his head fall back. “Man, I am beat, pal.”

“You seem good though,” Steve says, jerking his chin towards Bucky. “You happy?”

“Sure.” The smile on Bucky’s face fades, but only a little. “Turns out I’m... real good at this.”

A small frown tugs at Steve's face, because Bucky doesn't really sound happy at all about that, but…

He thinks of Bucky and Scott talking on the back stoop, the way they’d both turned to look at Steve, like he didn’t belong. He thinks of Becca, of the way she talked about Bucky being different things to different people. He thinks -- with a deep pang of regret -- about how she'd said that Bucky never needed to hide things from Steve.

Things change, though.

Maybe it ain’t Steve’s job to push for Bucky to talk about what’s going on in his big dumb head. Maybe that ain’t Steve’s place anymore. Maybe Bucky’s going to start putting on a front for him too now.

Envy is a sin, Steve reminds himself. He swallows. He makes a scoffing sound. “Such modesty,” he teases.

Bucky opens one eye. “Punk,” he says, fondly.

 

* * *

 

It isn’t just modesty, though. Bucky _is_ good at what he does. Real good.

He gets six more months of special training. He can’t seem to say what they’re training him for. He can’t even say who he’s training _with._ But some of the letters seem to have come from a long way away, judging by how long it takes 'em to reach Steve's door. Bucky mentions parachutes, and stealth gear, and knives. He mentions that one of the trainers has a British accent, and they call him Dracula because of how grim-looking he is all the time. He got that special recommendation from his CO, and it looks like he's gonna get another. He started out PFC Barnes, but at this rate, by the time he gets to the front he’ll be a Sergeant. He tells them as much when he gets home for a Furlough in March, near enough to his birthday that they can celebrate. 

It's May when Bucky gets his second special rec, Steve stops by the Barnes place to share the latest letter and the latest news of Bucky. Mr. Barnes, who was a lieutenant by the time the last war ended, raises his brows. He hums, a deep rumble. “In my day, they didn’t do that for just anyone.”

“Knowing my brother, he's probably charming the pants off everyone there,” Becca says in fond exasperation. She’s got a little line between her dark brows, a single furrow, a tiny vertical wrinkle of worry. It might be for Bucky, who’s perhaps getting in over his head. But more likely it’s because Scott’s at the front now, and says he’s doing fine, but… She bounces Judith, who’s fussing quietly, and the furrow between her brow deepens.

Mr. Barnes has the same vertical wrinkle between his brows, but longer. His is permanent, but it’s deeper now, and Steve is pretty sure it’s all for Bucky, or maybe for his own dark memories of the last war. Probably both.

“Maybe,” Mr. Barnes says. “But they'd only set him up like that if they were grooming him for command. He must be one hell of a good leader.” There’s a fair helping of pride mixed in with the worry now.

Steve purses his lips and looks down. A good leader? Bucky? In a sense. Bucky could get you out of trouble -- Steve knew that firsthand -- but he wouldn't lead you into it. He was lazy as a cat, most of the time. Steve was the one who made trouble, who talked Bucky into following him. Steve was the one who worked out the plan of attack and led them into it, head on.

But everyone loved Bucky. People turned to him like flowers to the sun. He inspired loyalty and devotion from those around him. That was his rare quality. No matter what Bucky said about _inspiring,_ no one really _liked_ Steve, who was little, and mean, and uncompromising. Well -- Bucky liked him, and the Barneses liked him, mostly for Bucky’s sake, Steve thought. But the other Barneses would never be dumb enough to follow Steve’s lead on anything. No one except Bucky would ever follow Steve anywhere.

But Bucky? Men would follow him into the fire. Bucky would never lead you into it, but he absolutely would find a way to get you out again.

But yeah. Steve can see why the army would value that.

 

* * *

 

Steve goes back to the apartment, but it doesn’t feel like home. It’s like Bucky took that with him, when he left, like he pulled up Steve’s roots too, when his own were ripped out. Without Bucky here, this apartment is just rooms. Empty. Hollowed out. Without Bucky here, the memories are just echoes, meaningless. Without Bucky, Steve’s little cartoons are just pieces of paper.

It’s not like Steve’s forgotten how he feels about Bucky, these past few years that they’ve been living together. It’s not like he stopped feeling things for Bucky, quite the opposite. He’ll never tell Bucky, which paradoxically makes it easier, makes it safer to keep wanting him. He can never be rejected, can never be hurt, because he’s never going to cross that line. Wanting Bucky is a sore spot he doesn't want to heal. It didn’t callous over, he’s never stopped feeling the pain of it. But it became a part of him: that twist of wanting, the familiar ache of holding back, the comfort in his personal mandate of silence.

He is Steve Rogers. He is three gallons of fight in a half-pint bottle. He is a fragile container full of aches and pain. He loves Bucky Barnes, and he will never say it aloud. That is the third pillar of his existence. It’s an integral part of him now, a vital organ.

So he feels Bucky’s absence, the way you feel the knife that guts you.

 

He tries his luck as Steve from Queens later that week and collects another 4F. He tosses it away, jaw clenched. It doesn’t matter. He’ll keep trying. They can’t say no forever. Either he’ll find a lazy enlistment officer, someone willing to overlook his unfitness, or the war will drag on long enough that the army will lower their standards. Armies always need cannon fodder. Steve can be that.

Bucky’s got another furlough coming up in June. Steve will try again then. He’s running out of places to say he’s from, though.

 

* * *

 

 _Oh you’re from Paramus_  
_now? You know it’s illegal_  
_to lie on the enlistment form._  
_And seriously, Jersey?_

 

* * *

 

_This isn’t about me._

_Right. Cause you got_ _  
_ _nothing to prove._

 

* * *

 

_Is this a test?_

_Yes._

 

* * *

 

Steve signs about a million confidentiality agreements, and gets a lecture about Top Secret and Classified, and Erskine says that he only needs to know two things:

Firstly: he is being considered for an experimental procedure. They are real unclear about what kinda procedure that is, and how he might qualify for it.

Secondly: he can’t tell anyone the truth. Ever. They give him a cover story -- since he’s an artist, they tell him to tell his friends that the war office needs people for design work and he’s been chosen to help out. It’s secret work, and his neighbors will probably guess that he’s doing stuff with misinformation and leaflets to drop on Germany, but he can’t tell them that.

To be honest, he doesn’t really _know_ what he’s signing up for, and he doesn’t really ask. All Steve cares about is that it’s a chance. A chance at last, to be all the things he’s wanted to be his whole life. A chance to do some good.

 

(Much, much later, Tony stares at him, boggling. “You didn’t know? You didn’t _know?_ Jesus, Cap. That is…” and he trails off.

“That’s… pretty fucked up,” Bruce cuts in, with an almost apologetic shrug.

“Hadn’t they invented informed consent yet?” Tony rambles. “Do you know all the ways that could have gone _wrong?_ And you just..." He throws his hand up in an exaggerated shrug. "Didn't know."

Steve stares at them and feels about a million years old, and about twelve, all at the same time. “It was war,” he says simply.)

 

Steve is buzzing with his news when he gets back to the apartment, but he’s gotta find a way to keep his trap shut. He has no idea how he’s gonna hide _this_ from _Bucky,_ of all people.

In the end, it’s easy.

Steve had been lying awake on his bed in the living room, staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep, but he sits up when he hears Bucky come stumbling in well after midnight. Steve can tell at one glance that he’s drunk as a skunk, swearing under his breath, rubbing the shin that he’d just banged against the tub in the kitchen. He turns, slow and unsteady, almost overbalancing. He sees Steve. His face lights up with that dumb Bucky grin. “Sunshine!” There’s lipstick on his collar.

Steve makes a face. He hates that nickname. “Oh Buck,” he says, but he can’t quite keep the smile off his face. He stands up to go meet Bucky in the door to the living room. “Pal. You’re a mess.”

Bucky’s smile does something very strange, twisting on his face. He suddenly looks like he wants to cry and Jesus, Steve can’t have that.

He clears his throat. “Okay, come on, buddy, you should lie down before you fall down.”

As if on cue, Bucky loses his balance and stumbles into Steve. “Whoa!” Steve wraps his arms around Bucky’s waist, trying to steady him. Bucky leans heavily on him, and he’s shaking a bit, with giggles at first. He still sounds about five seconds away from crying.

“Sorry,” Bucky mumbles. “Fuck -- m'sorry, Stevie.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Steve says. “Take the living room, you gotta get outta here early and I don’t need you disturbing my beauty sleep again, yeah?”

It’s a pretty transparent attempt to get Bucky to sleep in the warmer room, and normally it wouldn’t work. Bucky roll his eyes and say _you ain’t foolin’ anybody with that._ But Bucky is _smashed_ right now, and he just mumbles something incoherent.

Steve has to help Bucky with his uniform, because Bucky gets a bit stymied by all the buttons and the belt, but as soon as he’s down to his skivvies, he just keels over on the bed, face pressed to the pillow. His hair is a disaster, the curls pulling free of the brylcream. It’s shorter now than it had been when they were younger, but it’s still as thick and unruly as ever.

“You are gonna regret this on the boat tomorrow,” Steve tells him.

Bucky just grunts into the pillow.

Steve pats Bucky’s shoulder. “G’night, Buck.”

He’s about to go to the other bed, the one in the bedroom, when a hand snags clumsily at his wrist, missing and catching his fingers instead. “St’ve,” Bucky mumbles.

“Sleep, pal,” Steve says, trying to disentangle himself, but Bucky tightens his grip and tugs harder, pulling Steve back until he’s got to sit on the edge of the bed. Bucky fumbles his other hand out, grabs the front of Steve’s shirt and pulls himself up, using Steve like a wall. Steve has to brace himself so he doesn’t end up toppling over. He’s not really strong enough to take Bucky’s weight like this.

 _“Steve,”_ Bucky says, emphatically, enunciating.

“Buck?” Steve says, uncertain now. Bucky’s face is inches away. He smells like whiskey and girl’s perfume and sweat and smoke: a dancehall reek.

“I know. I know what it’s like. To prove somethin’. To need to prove somethin’.” He opens one eye, and then the other. “Ya think I became an altar boy cuz I was full of love for the Catholic Church? You think I dance with a different girl every night cuz it's what I want?”

“Bucky,” Steve starts, something thick in his throat, choking. 

“Yeah I’m a real schmuck, I’m always fakin’ it.” Bucky barrels right on. “But you. You got nothin’ to prove,” Bucky says, staring at him hard, like this is real important. His whole expression is laid bare: the despair, the fear, and that intense Bucky focus, all of it narrowed in on Steve, like nothing else exists. “Y’hear me? You’re worth more than ten guys going to the front cuz they want… just cuz they’re killers. You’re better than that. You’re better than _us,_ y’hear me?”

“Come on, man,” Steve says, his voice cracking. “It ain’t like that.”

“It _is_ like that, Steve, you don’t know, you don’t know what we’re like, okay? The shit they tell us, the shit we do… The shit I’m _gonna_ do…” His fist is shaking in Steve’s shirt. “Promise me something, pal.”

“Promise you what?” Steve says, warily.

“Stop tryin’ to join up,” Bucky says. “Please. I can’t-- I hate the thought of it, of you goin’ to boot camp and all the shit they-- even if it didn’t kill ya, it would _change_ ya, and I can’t--”

Bucky's whole face is open; raw. He's not hiding anything anymore. It's all there, but it slides by so fast that Steve can't read it, emotions passing like individual frames of film, flickering too quick to follow.

“I couldn’t stand it if you turned into someone else, pal. I couldn’t--”

“Ah geeze,” Steve says, because Bucky’s not exactly a weepy drunk, usually, but here we go with the waterworks.

Buck’s face is screwing up, and his eyes are bloodshot. He sniffs loudly. “You’re all I got, pal. You’re all I got that’s real.”

“That ain’t true. You got your ma and your pa. You got Becca, and Susan, and Jeanie. You got Scott, for cryin’ out loud. And now there’s baby JB, right? You got Baby Judith too, and don’t forget it.” Steve swallows. He sighs. He’s gonna pay for this later, he can feel the heartache eating at him, but Bucky needs him right now. He puts an arm around Bucky’s shaking shoulders, and pulls him in. “They ain’t goin’ anywhere,” he says.  _You’re the one goin’ away,_ Steve thinks, and swallows the bitter words back.

"They ain't you. They ain't  _mine,"_ Bucky says, his voice thick and slurred and muffled.

Steve's taken boots to the gut that didn't steal his breath away like those three words.

"Not that you're..." Bucky's quick to follow up, twisting the knife. "Fuck. You know what I mean."

Steve does.  _In each other's pockets,_ his ma had always said. Ever since they were twelve years old, ever since Steve gave in and let himself smile, the pain of his split lip sharp and the taste of blood on his tongue. For over a decade now, for more than half their lives. They belong to each other. 

Just... not the way Steve sometimes wants.

He tips his head back and swallows. _God give me strength,_ he thinks, with the kind of sincerity he can't always summon anymore. He rubs Bucky’s spine, like Bucky’s the one with the breathing trouble. He takes a breath, he lets it out. Bucky’s a mess right now, and he’s about to go to war, and, well… He needs Steve. He needs Steve to be safe, to be steady. So Steve just sits there, and rubs his hand up and down Bucky’s spine while Bucky leans against him and sniffles.

Steve's a terrible liar, and he doesn't want to lie to Bucky, but he can't tell Bucky everything, either. He can't tell Bucky what he wants. He can't tell Bucky what he feels. He can't tell Bucky about the chance he's been given, that little 1A in the corner of his form, the strange little scientist who saw something in Steve, something worth giving a chance to.

So Steve says something else. Something that's true.

“You ain’t ever gettin’ rid of me, Barnes,” Steve says, fierce. Bucky’s been following him for years, tailing him into back alley brawls and schoolyard fights. Now it’s Steve’s turn to follow. “That’s a promise, you hear? You ain’t ever gettin’ rid of me.”

Bucky hides his face in Steve’s shoulder and shakes. “Don’t change, Stevie. Never change. Never change.”

 

Bucky sleeps with his hand clamped like a vise on Steve’s sleeve, the way he hasn’t since they were kids, the way he used to do with teddy bears and his childhood blanket. It’s a good thing too, because if Steve hadn’t been there, Bucky might have slept through the morning and missed his boat. As it is, Steve has to literally kick him out the door with his uniform askew, hair still damp, looking pale and queasy.

“Oh my god, I hate you so much,” Bucky groans, when the sunlight hits his face.

“Hate you too, pal,” Steve says.

They both know they mean the other thing.

 

(But later, and later, and later, Steve always regrets—

No, he needs a stronger word than regret. It’s not simple regret, it’s something more potent than that. It’s rage. Boiling, impotent rage, like a bottled up scream, like a pot trying to boil over with nowhere to go. When he thinks back, he wants to punch himself in the face. He wants to grab those skinny shoulders and shake, and shake, and  _shake._

_It’s the last time, you fucking moron! The last time you'll see him like he was, the last time he’ll see you like you were, so swallow your goddamn pride and just tell him, tell him before it’s too late, tell him—)_

 

 

## Coda

_-[Opus No. 1](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8N2aEmcEbyg) by Sy Oliver, 1943. _

 

* * *

 

 _Whatever happens tomorrow,_  
_you must promise me one thing._  
_That you will stay who you are._  
_Not a perfect soldier, but a_  
_good man._

 

* * *

 

Steve isn’t afraid to go in the machine.

He thinks he probably ought to be, and he keeps waiting for the fear to come over him. He hates shots: he's had enough of ‘em for twelve lifetimes. He hates tight spaces: one particularly sadistic bully had closed him up in a wooden crate and talked about coffins until Bucky kicked his teeth in. He hates being shirtless and people staring, he knows what he looks like, and he can’t pretend that he isn’t self-conscious about it. So Steve kind of expects to be afraid, but the fear never comes.

At this point, he’s got nothing to lose. He can crack jokes, can stand the faint humiliation of being shirtless in a room full of people, because he’s just… he’s not scared. He’s got no illusions: he knows he might die here, but that’s okay. He’s not afraid of dying.

And then the pain starts. And at that point he can’t feel fear anymore because all he can feel is pain.

Steve knows pain. Pain is a longtime pal of his, a companion he could never shake, the one goddamn constant of his miserable life. He’s a connoisseur of pain -- has sampled it in all its myriad forms. From the tight squeezing panic-pain of asthma to the fiery agony of ulcers to the creaky ache of his bad spine. He thought he knew everything pain had to offer.

This. Is different.

It’s pure. Unadulterated. This is pain refined and concentrated to it's most extreme form and he is drowning in it. It’s like being set on fire while every bone in you shatters during a full-body muscle cramp while blisters burst on every inch of your insides. Even his brain hurts -- the worst headache he can imagine. He remembers being six years old, burning up with fever, and hallucinating a spider that wrapped him up in a cocoon and dissolved him into soup. He didn’t imagine, at the time, that being dissolved would hurt so much. He can’t think around it, can’t think anything. Steve’s vision whites out.

But pain is an old friend, and even if he’s never felt it like this, Steve knows how to handle it, when it gets bad.

He screams.

 

* * *

 

_Steven?_

_Shut it down--_

_Steven?!_

_Shut it down!_

_Kill the reactor, Mr._  
_Stark! Turn it off! Kill_  
_it! Kill the reactor!_

_No! Don't! I can do this!_

 

* * *

 

He comes out of the machine and takes deep gulps of air. Deep, clear gulps. He’s lightheaded, all of a sudden, feeling drunk. Drunk on air. The world is swaying around him, his body humming and warm. He lifts his head, and -- and he can see, not chests and shoulders, but clear over everyone’s head, and feels dizzy all over again. Vertigo. Agent Carter is there in front of him, and --

 _That’s... that's red,_ he thinks, staring at her lips. It’s so... _bright._ It’s like nothing he’s ever seen before. Nothing. And he can hear her speaking, can hear everyone speaking, can hear each individual word spoken by each individual person in the room, all at once, and his head feels lopsided, hearing clearly in both ears rather than just the one. “How do you feel?” she asks.

He feels like Dorothy in the land of Oz, and he wonders why she squeeze her eyes shut, clamp her hands over her ears, and _scream._

“Taller,” he says. He takes his hand off Erskine’s shoulder, realizing that he doesn’t need the support. It isn’t what he _feels_ that’s making him stumbling and weak. It’s what he _doesn’t_ feel.

For the first time in his life, nothing hurts.

Absolutely no part of him is in any pain at all.

For nearly sixty whole seconds.

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're binging this series, now is an ideal time to take a break. Drink some water. Take a nap. Get a new box of tissues. Read [the B-Side](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15845442/chapters/36903066) that comes right before the coda, if you haven't already. Part Two will still be there after you've gotten a full night's sleep.
> 
> <3<3<3
> 
> In terms of resources:  
> I can’t B E L I E V E I didn’t mention this in earlier endnotes, but y’all should totally check out mandarou’s [Till the End of the Timeline](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10878852/chapters/24170622) if you’re interested in cap meta. It’s literally just a timeline (and info about guns! and names!) but it’s full of frustrated historian notes, Extremely Upsetting Headcanons, and things that made me giggle.
> 
> Re: Bucky’s early military career  
> In the Real World, Bucky Barnes almost certainly could NOT go to the front for the first time already a Sergeant. But: We in the MCU fandom do what we can with the shitty, shitty continuity we have been gifted. There is Some Debate about whether Bucky was drafted (I cast my hat defiantly in the “YES” ring) and whether he’d seen combat before that day at the Stark Expo (I sulk angrily in the “NO” ring.)
> 
> Realistically, Bucky Barnes could, conceivably, have gotten shipped out to Europe, picked up some battlefield promotions, and ended up a Sergeant in pretty short order, before coming home in time to save Steve’s sorry ass from back alley bullies.
> 
> But. For DWEH, I really wanted that Stark Expo Bucky to be a post-training, pre-combat Bucky who is still a Sweet Sunshine Boi. My headcanon then is a hybrid thing: part MCU part comics canon. In the comics, Bucky trains with the SAS, and gets groomed to be Cap’s Sidekick, even though he is LITERALLY A CHILD. So my headcanon, for this story, is that Bucky gets picked out for special treatment because he is the Best Got Dam Sniper in This Man’s Army. And that’s how he gets to be a Sergeant before he sees combat. Is it realistic? Perhaps not. I counter that it is more realistic than a Literal American Child Soldier in Blue Hotpants, and also more realistic than the Smithsonian contradicting itself in the space of one exhibit panel. (I’m sorry, he was born hwen u say??? SPEAK UP, SMITHSONIAN, WAS IT 1917 OR 1916????)

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on [tumblr](https://girlbookwrm.tumblr.com/) and [dreamwidth](https://girlbookwrm.dreamwidth.org/) \-- don’t forget to check out The Hundred Year Playlist [Playlist on Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4cO5vrDvCKErHEPtudEmEy) (if that’s a thing you do) and [the ficliography](https://girlbookwrm.tumblr.com/post/178668783737/i-do-recommend-these-fics-but-this-isnt) [which is also on Dreamwidth because I Do Not Trust Tumblr Anymore](https://girlbookwrm.dreamwidth.org/tag/ficliography%22).


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